


The Dimension Worm

by calumTraveler



Category: Dimension W, Power Rangers Dino Charge, Worm - Wildbow
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Different Powers, Amy has a panic attack/Flashback, Calvert isn't Coil, Coils, Cybernetic replacements, Gen, Incomplete Tags, Multiple Crossovers, POV Alternating, POV First Person, POV Third Person, Parallel Universes, Robot Battles, Robots, Will be adding tags as I go
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-08
Updated: 2016-03-15
Packaged: 2018-05-25 13:35:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 26,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6197044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calumTraveler/pseuds/calumTraveler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Miraculously, a fourth dimension between X, Y, And Z was discovered- Dimension W. On the world known as Earth Bet, small electromagnetic devices, known as Coils, draw power from this fourth dimension. Finally, Mankind has what it has always sought: UNLIMITED ENERGY! ...But How does such a discovery affect their neighbor, Earth Aleph, when travel and trade between their two worlds is so heavily restricted? </p><p>There are those who are enraged, and those who scheme. There are those chess masters who play God above those few who are unaware they are pawns, believing themselves to be the masters of their own fate. And then, there are those cautious few who simply wish to survive day to day between the gnashing, meandering schemes of so many others. </p><p>This, then, would be the story of four seemingly unconnected groups of people, caught adrift in the tangled web cast by those who deceive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Anders Family 0.0.I

_-"The Ten Year Anniversary of Protectorate Energy's New Tesla system's Global Launch is next month, and a date and time have finally been announced,"-_ the Radio DJ spoke calmly despite the battle going on in the foreground.  
  
"Let it go, Theo!" the adorable seven year old girl at the table glared proverbial daggers at her older brother- both of them had stabbed their forks into the last remaining waffle on the plate.  
_  
-"This year's celebrations have been decided to be held in the Convention Hall in Amber Beach Bay, on Saturday, the Thirteenth."-_  
  
"No way, Aster," said older brother flashed a grin at his little sister. "That waffle is mine!" And so they began struggling, each pulling in opposite directions with their forks.  
_  
-"In Related News, Director Calvert of P.R. Tower 42 has confirmed the tax increase on Gasoline will be going through on the anniversary, stating that:"-_ the radio cut to a pre-recorded clip of a man talking, _-"'Gasoline is obsolete these days. The New Tesla project has made Behemoth's attempts at ruining the Oil Industry a help rather than a detriment. The Coil's are our past, present, and future.'"-_ End quote, even as the waffle on the plate was torn in two rather uneven pieces.  
  
"MOOOM!" Aster cried out in protest, "Theo broke the waffle!"  
  
"Me!?" Theo shot back in surprise. "You're the one who wouldn't let go!"  
  
_-"This is the tenth such raise in Gasoline Tax in as many years, some protesters claim it to be a strangulation of human rights to use whatever energy source they please."-_  
  
"Kids, kids!" Kayden Anders emerged from the kitchen to settle the argument between them. "It's just a waffle."  
_  
-"Most average citizens, however, are content with the tax, stating that it will not affect them in their day to day lives despite the tax being at over 400% from its original pricing rate before the New Tesla System was fully implemented."-_  
  
With the woman of the house not attending the kitchen, the pre-programmed Assistant Chef Robot activated and began monitoring the status of the scrambled eggs still cooking on the stove.  
  
_-"This upcoming Anniversary reflects many events, all happening on the same days as the launch of the Towers system. Along with the defeat of the Endbringer Leviathan, who was defeated in combat eight years ago on Newfoundland when the Hero Scion used one of Coil Engineer Andrew Richter's prototype Coils to entrap the Endbringer inside of a Dimension W Emergence Rift at cost to his own life--"-_  
  
It was a human looking thing, this robot. In fact, it would have been misidentified as one had it not been for the obviously mechanical bunny ears resting on its head, and the glowing power icon resting in its chest.  
  
A Coil.  
  
_-"--Three Years Ago, Andrew Richter and his family disappeared mysteriously, with their house in Quebec, Zandar, raided. The Rogue Paramilitary group 'Dragonhunters' were implicated in the atta--"-_  
  
The Robot, through pre-programmed routines set by the woman of the house, reached out to turn off the radio before it set to work tending to the starting to fry eggs.  
  
Kayden shot the robot an appreciative glance before turning back towards settling the argument between her children.  
  
It was hard being a single mother.  
  
It was hard, and very few people in this town understood.

* * *

 

 

 

 

**DIMENSION WORM  
  
** _'[I Don't know what I should do now with every strength I can I take to Break Enemies](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Cqzz88jrxY)'_


	2. Break of Dawn. 1.1.I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the Year 2016, the City of Amber Beach Bay has achieved a sense of status quo.

Amber Beach Bay was home to four different schools: Reefside, Winslow, Arcadia, and Mariner. Each school had existed since the town had originally been founded as Brockton Bay, and they had existed along side so many other schools covering the various different grade levels.  
  
However, as Protectorate Energy set up Tower 42, the schools were gradually overhauled, and the smaller ones absorbed into the larger ones. Of the original schools, only Winslow and Arcadia remained standing, but even then it was expected that one of the two would be fusing with the other sometime within the next five years, and both would be re-branded entirely as something new.  
  
For Dinah Alcott, it was a sign of the traditional way of running a town decently falling into the wayside as more and more greater powers changed the world.  
  
Her uncle had been the previous Mayor, and Dinah had once foolishly wished as a child to follow in his footsteps. When her Uncle's term had ended, so did the traditional position of Mayor in Amber Beach Bay. Instead, those powers and duties were absorbed by Protectorate Energy, and delegated to the local Tower Director. Dreams crushed, and wishing for some way to figure out how to desperately save her life long goal, Dinah had triggered. What she saw because of her new-found power was even more depressing. More and more, technology was being automated and powered by the Coils, and worst of all, there seemed to be no way to stop it. Even the traditional crime that had plagued the Bay since before it's renaming had changed to reflect the new powers that be.  
  
The March- one of the oldest gangs in the Bay since before its renaming- had dissolved its illegal ties and reformed into something legitimate- a 'Collection House', it was called. Although what it was they collected, Dinah's power refused to tell her. The Empire Eighty Eight had been disbanded entirely with the death of its Parahuman leader, Kaiser, during the fight that killed Leviathan, and, ironically, the Neo-Nazi's remains had been absorbed by the remaining Second Largest gang in town, the Azn Bay Merchants. Lead by a Parahuman named Lung- who himself had fought against Levithan and beaten the beast back during the attack on Kyushu- the Azn Bay Merchants now stood head to head against the other oldest gang in the city, The Sledge Hammers. They were lead by a seemingly immortal Brute named Fury, who appeared in the public light at around the same time Scion had appeared. And if Scion had been the First Hero, then Fury was the First Villain. And, like the Azn Bay Merchants, they'd shifted their types of crime to focus more on the trade of Illegal Coils.  
  
With a groan, Dinah pushed the X button on the web browser, closing that tab on the history of the town.  
  
"Why," the twelve year old breathed out in frustration, "did we pick the history of our town, again?"

Next to her, her classmate and partner on this particular class assignment, Missy Byron, just gave a small shrug as she answered, "Because you thought there was a way to reinstate the mayorship position?"  
  
A table back, Theo Anders leaned forwards to interject, "Hey, be glad you're doing something that's at least relevant to the town. Aisha and I are stuck with the one topic nobody wanted because she was late to class!"  
  
"Not my fault the Sledgehammers and ABM were having it out over downtown," Aisha Laborn, the dark skinned girl sitting next to Theo, remarked dryly. "You'd think Lung would give up trying to smash Fury out of existence by now. But _nooo_. He's gotta prove some point or something."  
  
"He's just mad because their duels keep getting interrupted by the Rangers," Dinah said, even as her power supplied the logic.  
  
"And keeps getting blasted into the bay itself," Missy added with a faint giggle.  
  
That was when their teacher, Miss Knott, coughed politely from her desk. How the woman could hear them whispering from the complete other side of the Computer Lab, nobody was sure. Some suspected she had a super hearing power, others thought she just had Coil-powered hearing aids. Dinah's power refused to tell her which was the right answer. And so, with a sigh, she re-opened the browser tab on the history of the bay, and looked for where she'd left off.  
  
"Hey, um," Theo's voice was even more of a whisper than before, but it was enough to trigger Dinah's power.

_Wants to know if everyone is still up for the usual after school activities;_  
  
Dinah and Missy shared a look with each other- they were free- and then Dinah glanced back at Aisha.  
  
Aisha shook her head, and Dinah's power supplied the answer:  
  
_Has to go to the Museum after School; Brother Brian wants her within sight for some unk-; Correction, wants her in sight because of fear that Lung will try for a second attack today;_  
  
Dinah quietly held up her right hand, and pretended to scratch at an itch behind her head. She showed Theo four fingers, then dropped one.  
  
Theo gave a quick cough in response, indicating that he got the message. Sometimes, Dinah loved her powers. Other times, it could be a real curse.

* * *

 

  
The last bell at Winslow let out, and the four kids skipped down the steps together as they separated out from the rest of the flood of students leaving the building- they were all at various ages, from first graders to twelfth graders, and watching the flood of various heights leave was like watching salmon try to swim upstream.  
  
"So what was today's show like?" Missy asked as they waited under the shade of a tree for the massive flood of students to disperse.  
  
"Well, first off Lung was already massive sized and brawling with one of Fury's Vivizillas," Aisha began retelling the tale of what had happened that morning. "You know how those usually go. But today the Rangers were using... ah, The Gold Brachiosaur one."  
  
"Titano Charge," Theo supplied the name.  
  
"Right, that one." Aisha nodded. "So they swung their staff into the Vivizila- totally splatted it and while Lung was coughing on the smoke, they went and used that anti-gravity power to send him flying into the bay!"  
  
"It was over that quick?" Missy pouted.  
  
"Well, they've gotta be!" Aisha explained, and Dinah's power told her that Aisha was quoting her older brother. "They don't want the city getting blown up and torn to pieces! The shorter the fights, the less they have to worry about backlash from the PRT!"

_Because they aren't using Coils as a power source for their weapons/giant robots; PRT suspects Illegal Coils but cannot prove; Is not Illegal Coils; Unknown Power Source; Unknown Power Source; Unknown Pow-;_  
  
Dinah squashed that trail of thought before her power locked itself into a loop and she got a headache. Mercifully for Dinah, the beeping of a motorcycle horn caught Aisha's attention then, before she could continue talking about the Rangers.  
  
"Huh, why's Rachel's picking me up today?" Aisha frowned as she picked up her bags. "Oh well, see ya all tomorrow!"  
  
"Don't forget to work on the project while you're there," Theo reminded her.

"Right right!" Aisha laughed, and then skipped off.  
  
Dinah followed Aisha's progress over towards the sidewalk, where a Motorcycle with a side-car rested. Its driver appeared to be a teenaged girl, although Dinah was sure that Rachel Morgan, step-sister of Sarah Morgan, who was Aisha's older brother's boss, was definitely a few years older than she appeared to be. Frustratingly, even under normal circumstances where she hadn't just forced it offline, Dinah's power refused to give her even a hint as to why this girl seemed to never age any. All it would ever tell her was that _Rachel was not a Robot,_ and that was it.  
  
The three of them waited until Aisha got into the side car, helmet placed on, and the sounds of the Motorcycle's engine had faded into the distance before they got up from their shady spot and began traversing the streets towards their destination.  
  
This was where Missy's power came into play.  
  
A bit of focusing here, a few minor hand gestures there, and whole city blocks could be shortened into a few feet- but only so long as there was nobody in the way of the stretched and warped space. In this manner, a trip that normally would have taken them an hour to walk took only about five to ten minutes on any given day, depending on traffic congestion. In this manner, the high end, polished buildings and city streets blurred and gave way to the open aired boardwalk, where the smell of the ocean ferried the additional smells of greasy tourist-based food shops and restaurants. Those too soon transitioned into the ruins of the Old Docks.

Many years ago, Fury's Sledge Hammers had claimed stake to this part of town after Leviathan first appeared and the shipping industry literally sank overnight. They left it open as a neutral space where anyone could test out new powers or abilities... or as a free-for-all space where Fury could afford to let loose against the Azn Bay Merchants whenever Lung got too rowdy. Unfortunately for the city, Lung refused to use such a place intentionally. It was too close to the water for his liking, and ironically marked the place where Lung's first forced bath had occurred. Bad memories for him, but good for everyone else. Lung's people avoided the place like the plague unless they were herded like a bunch of mewling kittens. Even with the shipping industry slowly recovering with Leviathan's death, Protectorate Energy had just seen fit to just build new docks on the other end of town and had left the old ones there in Fury's hands. And since the Old Docks were considered neutral territory, you could find all kinds of people safely living on the outskirts between the Old Docks and the rest of the refurbished city.

One such person was a man named Colin Wallis, who worked for the March's Collection House as a Collector. What he specifically collected, though, they never asked, and he never answered. Dinah suspected it was Illegal Coils, what with how his small junkyard home was 100% Coil free. Coil Wallis had been a Tinker Cape, once upon a time, and had worked for the Protectorate up until the day Leviathan died. That much, Dinah had uncovered on her own through her own research- as they'd made a bet whether she could figure out his cape Identity without using her power.  
  
An exercise in restraint- he'd called it. She'd figured that Colin had gotten his start in the Wards before they'd been disbanded. Nostalgia, or maybe regret, was the most likely reason that he let the four of them come by to practice with their powers.  
  
"Mister Wallesh!" Missy called out as they stepped out of a bit of warped space, intentionally mispronouncing the man's name as a bit of a nickname. "We're here!"  
  
At first, the abandoned auto-car garage seemed utterly abandoned, but then Dinah's ears heard the reverberating clang of a wrench slipping from a bolt and hitting concrete, followed by some muttered cursing. A moment later, the garage door on the front of part of the building was pulled upwards, manually. There was no automated power source to move the thing. Once it'd cleared, the three kids got sight of their would-be mentor. He stood tall as he latched the door into its open position, betraying years of having stood tall and proud in a suit of armor. Once that was done, he then resumed what was his 'normal' slouch, as if he were trying to make himself smaller than he was. "Ah, just the three of you today?" He asked.  
  
"Aisha's brother wanted her close today," Dinah explained.  
  
"Reasonable," Colin remarked. "I heard Lung went after Fury again."  
  
Idle conversation fell to the wayside soon after that, as Missy began expanding the size of the normally small parking lot to one that was big enough for Theo to let loose with his power in. There was a two fold reason for this, Colin had explained the first time he had them do this. The first was to see how big of a space Missy could expand the parking lot into, and the second was to see how Theo's power interacted with it.

The answer to that question was simply "Yes."  
  
Dinah's power was used to keep track of the changes in their powers from day to day testing- Colin insisted it would help her build up a tolerance to keeping track of long strings of data, as well as serve as a way to record it all without leaving a permanent record. Dinah didn't need her power to tell her that Colin distrusted the power generators for some reason.  
  
"Alright, I'm about at my limit for today!" Missy announced, and Dinah used her power to measure the distance between where Missy and Theo were standing.

"About... fifty yards!" Dinah rounded down to the nearest whole number. Her power stated it was Fifty point three three three three... Effectively, repeating threes endlessly stretching off into the horizon, had it been written out. She would have gotten a headache repeating all of that aloud.  
  
"Theo, you're up," Colin nodded, and Theo prepared himself to activate his power.  
  
Despite space being warped so long, sound traveled as if it weren't. Thus, it was capable to hold an easy conversation between the four of them despite the warped distances. It also had the devastating side-effect of having the thunderous clap of Theo leaping forwards being compressed into such a small space. To the outside observer, it would have appeared as if Theo instantly teleported through a shortened space via Missy's powers.  
  
Dinah was not an outside observer, and her power could tell the difference in a heartbeat: With one step, Theo's body crossed almost forty yards before coming to a stop.  
  
"What's the count?" Colin asked.  
  
Dinah blinked as she counted the distance to an exact number. "I'm not surprised." She relayed the number, "Exactly forty-two yards."  
  
"Is that about as far as he can go, then?" Colin wondered.

"No way, that was just a warm up!" Theo flashed a grin, and then flash-stepped back towards where he began. "I'm going to go again!"  
  
He got ready to propel himself forwards once again when a phone's ring tone cried out. The accordion melody of some random internet song was enough to shatter Missy's concentration and cause the expanded space to collapse back down to normal size. Fortunately, Theo managed to hold off on firing off his power, lest he crash into a wall- again.  
  
"Seriously!? Who has an **_ACCORDION_** ring tone of that song?!" Missy complained. "I lost focus 'cause it was so out of nowhere!"  
  
"Sorry, that one's mine," Colin apologized as he made his way back into the garage to retrieve his cellphone. "Hello?" He asked as he answered. A few moments later he asked, "Right now?" A pause, then... "Alright, I'll be right in." He hung up then emerged from the garage, looking as annoyed as Missy was at the interruption. "Sorry, but I've got to cut this short for today. Duty calls."  
  
"Awww, Seriously!?" Missy complained.  
  
"Yes, unfortunately us adults still have to make a living in the world." Colin shook his head. "Go on and get home, and stay out of trouble."  
  
Dinah's power filled in the blanks: _Important assignment; Urgency required; Deadline; The Marquis fears something bad will happen if mission is not completed soon;_ Dinah blinked at that, then said, "Probably for the best anyways. This way, Aisha won't miss out on a day."

Missy frowned at that, while Theo just gave a shrug.  
  
"So, I guess we hang out at my place for a while?" he offered.  
  
Missy brightened up a bit. "Sure, sounds like fun."  
  
"Count me in," Dinah nodded, and then, looking to Colin as he read some information off of his phone's screen, she whispered to him. "You stay safe too, alright, Mister Wallis?"  
  
Colin gave a rare smile. "Naturally."  
  
A few minutes later, the three kids were walking away down the sidewalk. Then- they heard a massive roar of an engine from Colin's garage, which was already several blocks away thanks to Missy's powers. A moment later- they saw a monster of a motorcycle rushing past them.  
  
It was Tinkertech- obviously and clearly. Nothing else could make that kind of noise- not even with a Coil powering it- no, a Coil powered motorcycle would be as silent as a car. It was then that Dinah made a slight connection with the motorcycle they'd seen Aisha drive away in. That, too, had made noise. Not as loud as that monster of a bike, no, but still.  
  
"Aisha's going to flip when she finds out we got to see Mister Wallis on his bike," Theo commented.  
  
Dinah was inclined to agree.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Power Notes: Dinah's got a subtly different version of Tattletale's power. Colin's Tinker power is subtly different as well. Missy's is Unchanged. Theo's power is inspired by a fusion of the Charge Vigor from Bioshock Infinite and the Whirlwind Sprint from Skyrim.


	3. Break of Dawn. 1.2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Colin Wallis heads in to work.

_The March_ was a pretentious looking hybrid of a bar and a robot fighting ring. That part of the building was designed after that old TV show _Battlebots_ , except now with low level A.I.s serving in place of the Remote Controls. At the present moment, 'Grievous Error'- based off of some four armed sword wielding cyborg from an Earth Aleph movie- was slicing and dicing at a spheroid robot with four octopus like arms, called 'Syndrome' for whatever reason.  
  
Grievous went for a slash with his swords in saw blade helicopter mode... and left himself open for the sudden emergence of a fifth arm from the Syndrome bot, which threw its clawed hand straight into Grievous' chest and withdrew in a heartbeat, revealing that it had ripped the Coil straight out of Grievous Error's chest.  
  
If this wasn't just the ground floor of the Collection House's two story complex, I wouldn't be here at all. I climbed the stairs past the battle ring up to the second floor, where a smiling young woman by name of Amelia was waiting for me.  
  
"You're late," she greeted chipperly.  
  
"Blame Lung for screwing up Main Street," I greeted in return.  
  
"Oh, I do," She lead me the rest of the way to the Marquis' office- a way I knew well by now, but the eighteen year old girl refused to let me walk the way un-escorted. Apparently she distrusted the fact that I'd once worked for the Protectorate, despite the fact that by the nature of her father's business, of which I was a part of, we had to still work with the Protectorate on an almost daily basis to one degree or another.

Neither of us made any attempts at conversation as we paused outside of the Marquis' office door, closed, and a red light atop the frame clearly indicating that he wished not to be disturbed. Through the door, I could hear the Marquis' concluding remark, "You really shouldn't have tried pulling this crap with a remote controlled suit powered by an _**Illegal Coil**_ , _Agreste!_ " A moment later, there was the sound of bone crushing metal, followed by a sharp pop. Then, the light atop the door went out, and Amelia opened the door for us. Inside the office which overlooked the city was the Marquis himself- a man whose name was synonymous throughout the bay for keeping his end of a deal... and taking out those who broke theirs with extreme prejudice.  
  
The Marquis' power was that of bone manipulation. At the beginning of his career, he had been able to generate excess bone from his own body, and used it to create a suit of armor, as well as an expansive suite of weapons. It was a power that could only really affect himself until a group of once-thought-heroes attacked him, unprovoked, in his own home, breaking the then Unwritten Rules of Cape society. They ended up nearly killing Amelia in the scuffle, their leader caring little about the girl, who had just started living with him at the time, and that had caused a change in the Marquis' powers. Ever since then, he could now generate bone out of thin air, and his new signature finishing move was the one he had just used on that poor mangled robot lying on the ground at his feet:   
  
A spear of bone falling from the heavens, and impaling his foe with the previously mentioned 'extreme prejudice.' You couldn't even see the remains of the face at this point, and all that was left as an identifier was some silver-hued hair.

"Ah, Colin," The Marquis flashed an unmasked smile, "good timing. I was just... finishing up with a snake who thought he could worm his way out of our deal." He kicked at the ruined robot, then motioned towards a chair. "Have a seat and we'll get started." I sat down, and Amelia went to lower the projector blinds while Marquis' personal maid bot went to clear out the remains of the busted robot. Then, after a moment, the projector turned on with a familiar masked face.  
  
"Lung," I couldn't believe that this mission had me pitted up against Lung of all people. "I can't believe you're pitting me against Lung of all people."  
  
"Now hold on," Marquis began, "let me explain."

"You've got one minute," I decide.  
  
"As you know, Fury's gang is the primary dealer for Illegal Coils in the city," Marquis began. "Lung's never been able to get a foothold in that particular market. The most he's been able to do is interrupt Fury's shipments and try to steal them for himself."  
  
"Which is usually interrupted by the Rangers," Amelia interjects. "Lung's never gotten to use any of those Coils because they either end up in our hands, or Fury destroys them to keep Lung's claws off of them."  
  
"Yes, well, unfortunately for us, Lung's almost seven year long streak of bad luck has finally ended. I received word that this morning's attack was just a _diversion_ ," Marquis said it with a distinct frown. "The Azn Bay Merchants have finally gotten their hands on Illegal Coils. It's only a matter of time before they stage an attack on the city that Fury and the Rangers can't fight back against."  
  
"You want me to retrieve them before Lung gets a chance to launch an assault." I surmise.  
  
"Close," Marquis nods at me, however. "You recall the bombing at Cornell University three months ago?"  
  
"Who wouldn't." I can't help but to grumble. When a Tinker triggers with the ability to make Exotic Bombs, people like me tend to get sent to see a Coil was invol- "Wait. You're not telling me that-"

"She's presently going by the name 'Bakuda,'" Marquis cuts me off with the information I don't want to hear. "Apparently instead of being off the grid for three months, Lung snatched her up almost immediately and has had her working on some secret project. Possibly a Coil Powered bomb. And if they use an Illegal Coil for it..."  
  
"We're looking at another Newfoundland, aren't we?" I guess as far as missions go it's probably the mission to not skip out on... Still, though. Lung. The man who can turn into a rampaging dragon. "What's the bounty price?"  
  
"Depending on the amount of Illegal Coils in Lung's possession?" Marquis flashes me a smile, "Protectorate Energy is presently offering the standard reward of 1,000 per Coil. But, I'm sure they're willing to up the price if you're able to subdue Bakuda in some form or another."  
  
"Well, then," I stand up, and turn to leave. "My standard payment then. Half in Gasoline, Half in Cash."  
  
"Still running that gas guzzler of a bike, I take it?" Amelia prods. I ignore her, and leave.  
  
I also ignore the sight of Marquis' cleaning robot trying to stuff the remains of the other robot into a garbage can.  
  
There are just some things that man is not meant to see.

* * *

 

The Azn Bay Merchants base was something that changed on a day to day basis. They held at least half of the territory in the city, like Fury's Sledge Hammers, but instead of holding one single base as Fury's gang did, the Azn Bay Merchants held several bases and shifted locations rapidly as a means of preventing Fury or the Rangers from locating them and launching a pre-emptive strike. At that comparison, my thoughts can't help but to hearken back to Marquis' situation, almost eleven years ago now.   
  
The _March_ , at the time, was simply a group that didn't deal in any of the more disreputable things that the other gangs did during their time. Drugs, primarily, was never a thing dealed, and the protection racket they ran wasn't protection against the _March_ , but instead against the other gangs. The difference here, rather than then, is that Lung has made himself a regular nuisance, and furthermore, a legitimate threat that necessitates dealing with. Weekly, if not almost daily attacks on the city. Being fought off time and time again by other villains and a rogue team of heroes. It was only a matter of time before someone finally decided to deliver a decisive strike against him.  
  
Add in the Illegal Coils, plus a Bomb Tinker... It has the potential to become a real mess.

In my experience, the easiest way to find a Secret Base owned by someone who has just acquired an Illegal Coil is to follow the takeout orders. And with a gang as big as the Azn Bay Merchants... they're going to be big orders, and are all going to be going to the same place. Some of the more stupid people ordered everything from the same place, but Lung was anything but stupid in that regard.   
  
Even so, it was all too easy to locate the base of the day by following the food trails.   
  
I sneaked in through a fire escape of an abandoned warehouse, and looked down upon the construction floor, which, instead of being lined with machines, was lined with tables covered in food, surrounded by people of all walks of life staring at the one man in the center: Beefy, wearing only a pair of pants and a metal mask, and covered in tattoos- there could be only one person fitting that description: Lung. He was in the middle of screwing a Coil into a water-gun, speaking in Japanese. I could only assume he was bragging about how successful their theft of the Illegal Coils had been. Lung then aimed his water-gun at a distant wall, and let loose a stream of water that went much farther than it should have, and when it hit its target--  
  
_**KRA- ka-THOOOOOOOOM!**_  
  
The wall exploded.  
  
Lung then roared, "WE! WILL! KILL! FURY!"

The people in the room all broke into applause. I took a head count, and spotted a few other Capes. There was Oni Lee, who had been Lung's second in command since the gang had been formed. Oh, there was Hookwolf and Cricket- and a few other leftovers absorbed from the Empire I didn't recognize by name. And there was a girl, unmasked, sitting atop what could only be described as a land-mine grown to the size of a one seat helicopter.  
  
Bakuda, I presume.  
  
It seemed to be a small, informal gathering, despite the massive reveal of a doomsday weapon; only a few capes, all things considered. I couldn't see where the other Illegal Coils were- oh, wait. Lung was holding up a rather large sized crate now, marked with a familiar looking X across the sides.  
  
How many were in that thing? If Dinah were a few years older maybe she could- No. No! Stop that, Colin. You're helping those kids so they don't end up in situations like this. Remember?  
  
Wait, now Lung is unloading more water guns from the crate. They're just Coil _Compatible_. That makes more sense for the larger box at least- why it's so big. No way it's got Coils inside. So where are--? Ah! Now he's pulling a smaller box out of his pants pocket. Even at this distance I can see that it contains two rows of ten small objects marked with X's. Target acquired: Illegal Coils, twenty of them. That explained the small gathering size of people here. Lung had probably briefed his fellow Parahumans on the plan before- now he was repeating it for the rank and file and was going to arm the normals with the Coil powered water guns.  
  
I guess it's time to drop in on this little-

"LUNG!" And now a new group of people barged in through the front door of the warehouse. I recognized Skidmark and Mush, the head capes from some minor gang that had barely lasted a week before being absorbed into the Azn Bay Merchants. And Skidmark had a girl slung over his shoulder, and he was the one yelling, almost triumphantly, "Lookit what I found snooping around outside!"  
  
Lung turned to look, raising an eyebrow in such a way that it displaced his mask slightly. "Skidmark, what is this? A girl?"  
  
"She was snoopin' around tryin' to be all stealthy like!" Skidmark laughed. "One good bop on tha' head, and she went down! I didn't even hit 'er that hard." And so, he laid the girl down on one of the more empty tables. "What do we do with her, ey boss?"  
  
Lung gave out an exasperated sigh, and went to massage at the bridge of his nose, only to stop when his mask got in the way. I got the impression this happened a lot more often than Lung was willing to admit. "We will tie her up for now. I will deal with her after we finish the attack on the city," Lung ordered, giving a motion to the girl I was assuming was Bakuda. She gave a grunt, and hopped off her giant bomb before walking over to the girl on the table. Skidmark seemed annoyed, but now was as good of a chance as any if I was going to secure the Illegal Coils. Everyone seemed distracted by the arrival of the girl.  
  
Naturally, that was when my cellphone's ringtone went off.  
  
"Oh. My! GOD!" Bakuda swore, half way to the girl on the table- "Who the hell set ' _Never Gonna Give You Up_ ' to Accordion!?"  
  
I spare a glance at my phone just barely long enough to silence it. Why the hell would Marquis be calling for? He was the one who sent me here! Oh well. Dramatic entrance ruined, I step forwards into the light, coughing loudly to gain attention. "Sorry, my bad. I forgot to put it on silent."  
  
Everyone just stares up at me before Hookwolf spots the power icon logo on the front of my jacket and yells out, "Shit! He's a Collector!!"  
  
In response to that, Lung went to throw the box of Illegal Coils into the air- _**BWROAR!**_ -I didn't get to track their progress through the air when a laser blast hit the box and sent it flying out of Lung's grip a moment later.

Everyone followed that laser's origin back to the four teen aged capes in shiny spandex costumes presently leaping through that hole in the wall from before. Black, Red, Green, and Cyan- their helmets were styled after Dinosaurs.  
  
The Dyno Drive Rangers had arrived. I suddenly had an inkling as to why Marquis had called me suddenly on the job like that.  
  
"Wow," the boy in the Green Parasaur Costume remarked while casually waving that signature yellow/black dinosaur themed blaster around as if it were just a simple baton. "What an awesome party! Food, Coils, and FUN! Shame we lost the invite, though!"  
  
"CAPES, DISTRACT THE RANGERS!" Lung roared, pointing at the new intruders. "Everyone else?" He then looked up, growling directly at me, "Teach that Collector a Lesson!"  
  
And then with a burst of fire- Lung **_Willed_ ** himself to grow to his by-now infamous giant monster size, and he punched through the roof in record time.  
  
"He's not wasting any time today, is he?" someone shouted over the din of collapsing cement and metal. To who ever said that, I'm inclined to agree.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Power Notes: Lung's powers are subtly different too. This will get explained later. Along with why such a frequently loosing gang has so maintained stability for so long. ^U^


	4. Break of Dawn. 1.3.I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> >Reader: Be the Girl.
> 
> You are now one of the various girls in the story, a short while into the past.

There was a lone apartment building somewhere in the middle of the Azn Bay Merchant's territory. It was a run down little thing, having obviously been build sometime within the last fifty years, and had been heavily neglected by just about everyone. It had passed hands so many times over the years that nobody paid it any attention even back when the city had been Brockton Bay. It was just too far out of the way to be convenient walking distance from the Boardwalk, and was definitely too far away from any food stores. However, it was decently close to a pharmacy. For the girl who quietly made her way up the steps towards the top floor of the three story building, that specific reason, among all the others, was the reason it had been chosen as the best possible secret hide away among secret hide aways.  
  
The girl stealthily removed a key from her pants pocket before unlocking the door, and slipping inside without dropping the bag of medicine in her arms. Once inside, and the door locked securely, the girl pulled the hood down off of her head, and shook her muted brown hair out. Then, with a brief flash of her lime green eyes, her shoulder length hair changed colors- primarily becoming a shade of green itself, along with two specific locks framing her face becoming a metallic shade of black.  
  
With a quick breath to center herself, the girl made her way to the kitchen so she could store away certain drugs in the fridge, lest they go bad before they could be used. On her way, she passed by the Living room, which was less of a Living room, and more of a Tinker's lab. Suspended from the ceiling, hanging by several large cables, was an anti-tracking device powered by a rather large device. It looked like a coil, but larger in scale. Most bizarrely, unlike regular coils which had a single glowing blue circle on them, this one had two green circles. The whole setup gave off a tiny spark as the girl walked past it, and she shot the clearly unfinished device a glare before entering the kitchen.  
  
Still moving quietly, she opened the fridge and began storing the refrigerate-ables as quickly as possible.  
  
For the girl, she hated how they lived in hiding, barely able to scrape by with what they could get. Sure, she didn't require much herself, but her Father... Her poor, poor father.  
  
There was a creak of the floor boards from one of the bedrooms, and the girl sighed before finishing her job and closing the fridge door.  
  
"Father," She began, "I seriously hope you're just going to the bathroom, and not trying to get up to Tinker again."  
  
There was a dry and yet paradoxically wet chuckle from her Father's Bedroom as he stepped out. "Sorry, Dragon. I thought I heard someone come in. I wasn't sure if it was you or not."  
  
The girl, Dragon, turned towards her father, putting her hands on her hips and a stern scowl on her face. Andrew Richter stood before her, looking pale, weak, and overall ready to collapse. "Of course it was me!" She let her stern expression fade into one of concern as she went over to walk him back to bed. "You made your own lock, remember?"  
  
"Ah... right. That I did..." His laugh was once again dry and wet. Dragon refused the urge to use her X-ray vision on him again. She'd nearly thrown up the last time she'd done it.  
  
"Now come on, Father." Dragon insisted, "You need your rest."

"But I've already slept so long..." Andrew Richter protested. "If I don't stabilize the Coil..." he trailed off, implications left unsaid.  
  
"And if you don't get better, then you're going to end up dying and--" Dragon took a deep breath before she could begin to hyperventilate. "Please, Father. I can't stand to have you die on me. I don't want to be alone." Andrew was silent as he let her sit him down on the bed, and then let her lay him down to rest once again. "I'm going to go make you some tea," Dragon said once he was settled, and as she went to leave, he reached out with a startling quickness that they'd both thought had left him long ago.  
  
"Dragon," He began, once their eyes had locked onto each other. "I... When I die-" he saw the hurt look in her eyes and he wanted to cry at that. "When I die, you will no longer be bound by my restrictions. So please... find someone who will take care of you." Damn it, he actually was crying now. "Live on, for me, for our family."  
  
"I... Of course," Dragon nodded, and her eyes began to weten as well. "I definitely will."

* * *

 

The Dual Coil- for whatever ulterior purpose her father had for it- presently served as the power source for the signal jammer. Unfortunately, it was simply too powerful for the jammer, and needed constant maintenance to keep the energy output stable. That constant work was making her father sick for some reason that neither of them could understand. Using a regular Coil was out of the question- those would send information back directly to Protectorate Energy and completely ruin the point of a signal jammer, not to mention the fact that they just simply didn't put out enough juice to power the device either. Even Dragon's own personal Coil design- somewhere around the quality of a Military grade Coil- was too little for her Father's custom signal jammer, even though it could power her just fine.  
  
There really was only one choice here: she needed something powerful enough that could outstrip even her own Coil. Something that could take the burden off of the Dual Coil long enough that her Father could recover and finish it properly. She needed to find an Illegal Coil.  
  
Her cable-tail swished side to side as she began plotting.  
  
Locally: the Sledge Hammers were known to be dealers of the Illegal Coils, meanwhile the Azn Bay Merchants were known to constantly try to get their hands on them.  
  
Logically: there had to be Illegal Coils in this town even as she stood there staring at the Dual Coil and the Signal Jammer.  
  
Conclusion: She'd have to go out and look for them on her own.  
  
Dragon put on her hoodie again, hiding her tail up beneath it and forcing her hair color to shift back into its disguised color. She paused at the door, listening for signs of her Father being awake still-- the bed creaked slightly as her father shifted his weight in a deliberate manner.  
  
"Father," She called out, "I used the last of the sugar with your tea. I'm going to go out and get some more."

"Be careful, Dragon," Her father's voice returned. "Keep an eye out for that wanna-be chump calling himself a dragon."  
  
"I'm sure I won't run into him," She smiled and giggled, knowing that he'd know she was doing that just from the sound of her voice. And so she stepped out of the apartment and headed out in search of Illegal Coils.  
  
Dragon hated lying to her father like this, but he was going to kill himself working on that Dual Coil before he ever tried making another power source for the jammer.

* * *

 

In retrospect, seeking out a GANG who had Illegal Coils was probably a bad idea.  
  
No, scratch that, it was definitely a BAD IDEA.  
  
Dragon couldn't help but wonder if this was her karmic payment for lying to her father like she had. She'd been wandering for a few hours before her sensors had detected the sound of a wall exploding- luckily close too! Such a sound could only be because of an Illegal Coil! Or at least, that was what she had thought. "Luck." Dumb luck was more like it. She'd gone stealthy, sneaking through the warehouses and looking for the source of that sound. Not stealthily enough, as it turned out, because she'd been hit over the head a moment later. Her disguised hair held up, probably thanks to her father's restrictions.  
  
"When in public, you are human, not a robot."  
  
And so, she pretended to be unconscious as the goons poked and prodded her to see if she was out. And even as they picked her up to carry her, she had to repress the urge to do anything at all, even as she thought, annoyed, _'Urgh, what a wonderful smell you've discovered!'_  
  
Once the guy holding her put her down on a table inside the warehouse, Dragon turned her eyes to X-Ray mode and began looking around the room while keeping her eyelids shut.  
  
_'One of the perks of being a robot,'_ she thought while ignoring almost everything else until she finally zeroed in on the box of Illegal Coils the largest person in the room had on them. _'Target acquired,'_ she thought with a smile she couldn't restrain. Nobody noticed, thankfully.  
  
Before she could do anything, though, the box of Coils ended up being shot out of the man's hand by something energetic enough to scramble her X-ray vision in a painful way. Dragon winced, and shut that mode down as someone remarked,"Wow! What an awesome party! Food, Coils, and FUN! Shame we lost the invite, though!"

"CAPES, DISTRACT THE RANGERS!" The man roared. Rangers? What Rangers? Then a growl: "Everyone else? Teach that Collector a Lesson!" _**A Collector!?**_  
  
Dragon's eyes snapped open just in time to see the man grow to giant size- smashing through the roof of the building and causing dust and debris to fall into the room.  
  
Lung. That had been Lung the entire time!?  
  
"He's not wasting any time today, is he?" someone shouted over the sound of the collapsing warehouse roof.  
  
Dragon, honestly, was inclined to agree on that one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes: Dragon takes the place of Mira in this crossover.


	5. Break of Dawn. 1.4.I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> >Reader: Be the Other Girl.
> 
> You are now the Bomb Tinker.

Lung's sudden growth to giant size was typically accompanied by a set of wings growing out of his shoulders. This time was no different. He grew, flapped his wings to clear them of debris, then grabbed the giant Tinker-Bomb from the ground and flew off like crow soaring towards the sun. In his rush to get clear, Lung never saw the girl in the black costume throwing a tiny, gun sized dinosaur at him. However, he certainly felt it biting into his tail and then growing to an equal giant size once he'd cleared the warehouse.  
  
_Everyone_ heard the massive thump of twin feet hitting the pavement, and then dragging down as the Black and Bronze Spinosaurus dug its feet firmly into the ground to prevent Lung from getting away.  
  
Silence fell for a moment, and then Lung Roared, matched immediately by the Spinosaur's own, teeth clenched Growl. That, then, was the signal everyone was waiting on. Lung's small gathering of Capes all launched themselves at the Rangers, and quickly pushed their fight outside. Meanwhile, the Collector leaped down from the rafters and drew out a series of metal spikes from beneath his coat.  
  
It was really sort of impressive the way that the un-powered mooks thought they had a chance.  
  
Bakuda bet that even Lung knew they really didn't.  
  
What was just as impressive as the courage those mooks showed was simply how efficiently the Collector began slamming metal spikes into people's feet and hands, immobilizing whole sweeping groups of people in moments, and yet more still came leaping into the fray. His fighting style was unorthodox, for sure. It was like watching someone dance, except to music that only they could hear. There was a pattern, a rhythm to it, but she'd be damned if she could figure it out.  
  
Bakuda knew a predetermined outcome when she saw one, and so made it her self-appointed mission to find that box of Illegal Coils that had been shot out of Lung's hand a moment earlier.

 _'Now where are you my pretties...'_ she scanned the general direction of where that shot likely threw the box, and...! _'There!'_ Pinned under a small chunk of ceiling tile- right there was the box containing the Illegal Coils.  
  
Bakuda quickly weaved her way through the edges of the crowd of mooks trying to fight the Collector, and knelt down to pick up the box of Coils. A quick inspection confirmed that it was intact- the protective case had done its job and kept the delicate Coils from the blaster bolt, the impact of hitting the ground, and its subsequent crushing from the falling roof.  
  
Bakuda stood up, a triumphant grin on her face--  
  
_**"THOSE ARE MINE!"**_  
  
\--A grin that was wiped off almost immediately by the girl Skidmark had brought in throwing a hail-mary of a punch straight into Bakuda's face.  
  
For a moment, Bakuda recalled the plan that Lung had lined out for her during her recruitment.

"Our plan is to let them think we're weak enough to be pushed back. To let them believe that we're foolish and dumb enough to attack so often that our defeats have become trivial!" a devilish grin had plastered itself on Lung's maw. "Then- we make them pay for that underestimation!" It was a long con of epic proportions. After Lung's first defeat all those years ago by the Rangers, he'd begun plotting. He started a plan... And after the Rangers had made their real public debut by fighting off Behemoth and Kelvin? Lung had re-evaluated that plan and reformatted it again and again. In the end, he said, the Rangers were now regularly performing the same feat that Lung had upon his Trigger- Fighting an Endbringer to a standstill. The difference between them was that Lung really had no upper limit in terms of his growth, but his main problem was getting to a size fast enough to actually make a difference in the Endbringer fights. The Rangers could get giant robots almost instantly.  
  
Kyushu had been lost because it had taken Lung too long to grow.  
  
So, not only was Lung's plan one that of deception- making the Rangers fight him so often that he'd become *expected* to make a weekly attack of some kind or another and to stage *losses* to make people think his Azn Bay Merchants were weak- it was one of training. To get his own body to transform faster and faster and faster by using the Rangers as a constant threat he could face against. Now? Lung could reliably transform himself into a size able to fight the Endbringers and survive, just by imagining any one of the Rangers. (Of course, having them there in person helped too.) After all, the worst the Ranger's own Endbringer driving off attacks could do was send Lung flying into the water.  
  
They couldn't actually *kill* him. And now all of that long planning was going to pay off and they would blow up the Coil Tower that made Amber Beach bay so valuable to-- _**"OOF!"**_ Bakuda hit the ground, and groaned from the impact that had likely broke her nose. _'Girl must be a brute...'_ she thought idly before realizing that- YES!- she still had the box of Coils clutched tightly in her hands up against her chest.  
  
Bakuda got up, and glared at the girl who was making her way over to her- steadfastly ignoring anyone and anything that tried to get in her way.

  
Rubble from the roof? Crushed underfoot into sand. Some mook who thought he could take her? Sent flying backwards into someone who was attacking the Collector with barely a back hand. _Definitely_ a Brute then.  
  
_'Shit, how did Skids even bring her in!?'_ Bakuda, for a brief moment, felt _**Fear**_. Then, she forced a grin and pulled something out of a pocket- a personal little escape grenade she'd come up with for a situation just like this. "IT'S TIME FOR A NEWS FLASH!" Bakuda pressed the button and threw the grenade at her.  
  
The girl stopped for a moment- eyes widening in fear as she caught the grenade in her hands and-  
  
**BOOM.**  
  
The concussive blast was enough to send the girl flying backwards into the ever dwindling mook fight against the Collector, scattering a few of them to the four corners of the wind and finally landing a hit against the Collector.  
  
Bakuda didn't stay to gloat, and instead ran for the hole in the wall that Lung had made earlier with the coil-powered water pistol. _'Such a pain today has been,'_ Bakuda rolled her eyes as she avoided the Capes fighting with the Rangers. Two of them were missing- the girl in the red Raptor costume, and the girl in the black Spinosaur outfit. _'Gee. Where would they be in this mess?'_  
  
A glance upwards confirmed that the Black Spinosaurus, the Red Raptor, and a Pink Stegosaurus had combined together into some weirdly named formation that was currently slashing and hacking at Lung's giant form.  
  
The blazing, burning cuts that normally sent Endbringers running barely existed for a few seconds before healing over. Lung was confident that if he'd kept the ruse up for longer, he might be able to out-defense them eventually. But, then that would have drawn suspicion as to why he kept loosing. Thus, why they'd launched today's distraction attack.  
  
In the distance, Bakuda could hear the roaring wail of the PRT Alarms. _'Not surprising, given we just stole a buncha Illegal Coils out from under everyone's noses!'_  
  
Still, with a laugh that quickly broke off into a pained cough, Bakuda made her partial-escape from the scene of battle. She'd have to make something real quick to help Lung break free of the fight with the Rangers before Fury showed up, but other than that...  
  
It was looking like a clean get-away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't count your dinosaurs before they hatch, Bakuda.


	6. Break of Dawn. 1.5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Collector gives chase.

Honestly? I didn't see a girl slamming into me coming as the result of an explosion. Neither did half the people she bowled through in the process, for that matter. Thankfully, those who were still standing took that as a sign to back off for a minute so that everyone could take stock of the situation as it stood... Presently, it sounded like Lung was fighting one of the Ranger's giant dino-robot mechs, and there was some fight going on outside too. Probably the Capes Versus Rangers.  
  
"Why did I catch that stupid grenade for!?" The girl was muttering aloud as she picked herself up off of me. "Now she's run off with the Coils and-!"  
  
"Aren't you a little young to be a collector?" I quip in response as I get to my feet faster than she had. She turns to say something in response when I process the sentence she'd been saying a bit better- "Wait. Who has the Coils?"  
  
"That lady who threw that grenade at me!" This comment makes the remaining standing mooks look as if they'd just stepped on a landmine.  
  
"Bakuda?" I question, less towards the girl and more towards those mooks. Their answer is to turn tail and run, screaming about how everyone's doomed.  
  
"Looks like," the girl next to me answers. "I think I saw her running out through the hole in the wall."  
  
"I don't know why you want those Coils, but," I offer a team up, "we can't let her get away with them, now can we?"

"No, we can't." And with that, we both exit the warehouse. "My name is Dragon, by the way," The girl- Dragon- introduces herself as she pauses to look around to try and see which way Bakuda went.  
  
"Colin," I introduce in return.  
  
"She went that way," Dragon points at the direction leading away from the Cape/Ranger fight, and instead towards the Lung/DinoMech. Then, she takes off at a run. I follow, since she obviously has some idea as to which way Baku-woah!  
  
I'd nearly slipped over a small patch of blood. Bakuda was bleeding- badly enough that she'd left a trail leading out of the alley.  
  
"Good eyes," I appraise as we run after the trail of blood.  
  
"Thanks," she flashes me but a tiny sliver of a smile before putting on a serious expression on her face.  
  
Out of the alley and on the street itself, the trail of blood obviously swerves to avoid what was most likely a foot. We similarly have to duck and dodge lest Lung's tail slam into our path. I glance upwards for a moment just in time to watch the Rangers' Dino Mech impale Lung in the shoulder with a pink and yellow sword, going through and through. Lung just laughs, and then shoves them away with a punch to the chest. The sword is pulled out and the wound closes up almost immediately. There wasn't even any blood, I realize. Just how good had Lung's regeneration gotten over the last few years? Had he... been using the Rangers for training practice?

"UP!" Dragon called out before jumping onto a fire-escape and climbing upwards, skipping rungs with relative ease. I follow, skipping just as many rungs as she was. We reach the roof after almost a minute, and there we find Bakuda hastily trying to take apart a rooftop Air-conditioning unit to work one of her Illegal Coils into.  
  
"BAKUDA!" I call out, palming a metal spike in my throwing hand in preparation to strike.  
  
"What now!?" Her head snaps up towards me and- even ignoring the blood flowing from the wound- it's fairly obvious that her nose is broken by the way her face scrunches up in confusion in a pained way. "Oh how the flying fu-"  
  
"Give me back those coils!" Dragon interrupts Bakuda with a stern glare. For a moment, I'm almost certain her eyes flashed like you'd see in one of those old cartoons.  
  
"Screw you, Brute-girl!" Bakuda yells back in return, standing up and pointing some hodge-podge type of gun at us. "And you, Collector! Who the hell uses a kid as a distraction against a bunch of all-angry gangsters like us!?"  
  
Dragon and I share a glance before we together say, "I'm not with her/him." This, it seems, is enough to give Bakuda pause. Her gun-holding hand lowers just enough to give me an opening. I fling out the metal spike at her arm, and it strikes Bakuda in the wrist.  
  
She screeches out a pain-filled curse and drops the strange weapon. When it hits the ground, something triggers as something gets crushed from the impact, and it lets out a flying burst of blue light that strikes against the giant bomb in Lung's possession.  
  
What happened next was a surge of ice suddenly crawling upwards and utterly encasing Lung's left arm in a coffin of ice. Lung is distracted by that- even as his latent Pyrokinettics begin to melt the ice away. It's enough for the Rangers to deliver a roundhouse kick to his face. All three of us then just stared and watched as Lung went flying backwards down the street before smashing into an old and abandoned Medhall Office building.  
  
"He's gonna be really mad, isn't he?" Bakuda's calmly phrased question was almost drowned out by Lung's next roar.

The Rangers' Mecha suddenly detaches its pink Stegosaurus arm, instead swapping it out for a green Parasaur. A pre-recorded voice calls out a new formation name: _**-"SPINO CHARGE MEGAZORD: WESTERN FORMATION!"-**_ The green parasaur arm opens up and becomes a blaster- then, then 'Spino Charge Megazord' takes aim and fires off bursts of burning plasma at Lung.  
  
The clever bastard raises his still frozen arm to block, which does absolutely nothing but melt the ice even faster. Lung's face twists into a grin that would have been terrifying even in his human form.  
  
The ice begins to crack, split, and then as Lung's body begins to grow even larger--  
  
_"OW!"_  
  
Suddenly, Bakuda drops the box of Illegal Coils as they begin sparking within the case.  
  
"What the-?" I turn to look at her when I get a similar shock from within my jacket pocket- the pocket where my cellphone was kept. My old, Protectorate Issue Phone. One that held a custom power source that I'd created just for it, back before the Coils had spread far enough to infiltrate phones, but still close enough to a Coil in how it worked to obviously be affected by whatever was causing this effect.  
  
I pulled the phone out and then was forced to drop it almost immediately as it gave me an even larger shock.

"C-C-Colin!" Dragon stutters, pointing shakily both at Lung and past Lung all at the same time- towards the bomb in his hand and beyond the destroyed Medhall Building. Even the Rangers' megazord had stopped, and they could only stare on as the bomb in Lung's hand glowed with the same ethereal green energy that was now flashing brightly in the distance.  
  
"RRRHH??" even Lung sounded confused as he looked down at the still partly frozen-to-his-hand bomb, likely even as shocks of electricity arced from it into his arm. Not that we could see them at that scale.  
  
"N-n-NO!" Dragon cried out and I looked at her. Something on her must have had a Coil on it because every now and then a spark of electricity would jump across her body. "F-F-FATHER!! You C-c-CAN'T!!" She didn't seem to care, however, staring on ahead at the spark of green light, now starting to grow taller and taller, spiraling upwards into a-  
  
It was then that the box of Illegal Coils at Bakuda's feet literally began to light up like a box of fireworks. Bakuda yelped and threw herself behind the remains of the air-conditioning unit she'd butchered. My Phone, still lying on the ground, suddenly let out a large poof of smoke. I quickly kicked it away towards the box of Coils before a loud pop signaled the end of its existence. The Bomb in Lung's hand detonated- destroying his left arm entirely with a flash of alternating red and blue smoke and fire. And then, Dragon let out a shriek of pain as electricity encompassed her body- all emerging from a central point on her chest.  
  
I couldn't do anything, as in that moment, the tower of green light suddenly exploded upwards into the air before umbrellaing outwards. Everything beneath it that was powered in some for or another started shutting down.

I barely processed that fact before the strange, other-worldly shockwave finally hit me and-

* * *

 

 _I saw two massive beasts, lying on the sands of a desert.  
  
Dead.   
  
Their bodies ruined in different ways.  
  
One was carved up like it had been cut into with lasers and swords and blades.   
  
The other was mutilated by a Dimensional Manifestation, and seemed to be fused with the corpse of Leviathan.  
  
Floating above them was a third being- small, humanoid. It held in its hands two shards of glowing light._  
**  
[ASSESSMENT?]** _the being prompted one shard of light.  
_  
**[Situation Usable.]** _the shard answered, almost monotone, like a robot without an A.I. of any kind installed.  
  
Just a glorified computer.  
_  
**[DESTINATION?]** _The being asked of the second shard.  
_  
**[Confirmation! Elation!]** _It replied, sounding happy and energetic and excited to roll up its sleeves and get to work.  
  
Then, the being looked me in the eyes, and said:  
_  
**[CURIOSITY. GOOD. LUCK.]**  
__  
And then- the second shard of light exploded with a flash of violent green light--  


* * *

  
  
I woke up with a start, lying on my side on top of that damned rooftop.

The old Endbringer sirens were wailing through the air. They were never used anymore, even when an Endbringer was attacking. They were just loud noise makers powered by someone rapidly cranking a shaft. The Protectorate had made new, electric speakers that ran on Coils and carried for much further distances than the old ones and had multiple sounds that could play depending on the situation and a specific Endbringer. So why were they-- Wait.  
  
I was staring at a slagged phone and a box of smoking Coils.  
  
I sat up with a start and looked around. There were no lights. There. Were. No. Lights.  
  
The irony wasn't lost on me. Of COURSE the Protectorate would use the old Endbringer sirens to declare a state of emergency. _They were manually operated!_ Whatever that lightshow had been, it had fried probably almost every Coil powered device in its shock wave radius, and then some, going by the remains of my phone.  
  
I got to my feet and looked down into the street. The Rangers Megazord was lying on the ground, broken up into its different pieces- their organic parts still clearly alive and breathing, but sounding pained as if someone had thrown a sledgehammer against their heads. Lung was nowhere to be seen, although the bloody remains of a giant arm lay smeared across the street.  
  
I turned towards Dragon to see if she was alright, and--  
  
What.  
  
She lay there on the ground, face frozen in the expression of pain- both physical and emotional. There were tears crowded up against her eyes, still slowly leaking down her face.

Her chest, however... A small portion of skin near the collar bone had burned away, along with the clothing over top it. There was a coil inside her chest- burnt out just like the other coils from the box.  
  
...She was a Robot?  
  
"Awwwoooowww..." And then Bakuda groaned. "Whut da fwuuuwash dat?"  
  
I looked over at her, clutching at her impaled arm with her good hand. That was a lot of lost blood from that wound- let alone from her nose... How long had we been out for!? She shouldn't have lost that much blood too quickly.  
  
"HEY! COLLECTOR!" And then a girl called out from the street below.  
  
I turned back towards the rooftop and looked down at the Rangers down Dinosaurs. The four Rangers were waving up at me from where they were standing on what was normally the front chest of the Megazord, but was presently the side of the Spinosaur's chest. Black had a hand pressed up to her helmet near where her mouth should be.  
  
"YEAH?" I shouted down to her.

"YOU OKAY UP THERE?" Black shouted up.  
  
...I considered for a moment. Was *I* Alright? Certainly, yes, I think I'd come out for the better out of everyone on the rooftop. But...  
  
"BAKUDA NEEDS MEDICAL ASSISTANCE," I shouted down. "WANT TO TAKE HER IN?"  
  
The four Rangers turned to each other and talked in what was probably a normal tone of voice, not that I could hear them from up here. Then, Green shouted up a simple "HELL YES!" with a pumping of an arm, before he and Red went and scurried off to try to find the fire escape for our building.  
  
"WHERE'S LUNG?" I shouted down, mainly out of curiosity.  
  
"RAN OFF AFTER HIS ARM GOT BLOWN UP!" Cyan replied, sounding annoyed. "HE RAMMED INTO US RIGHT BEFORE THE SHOCKWAVE HIT."  
  
That explained the downed robot, at least. I heard a rattle from the fire-escape, and... I'm not sure why I did, but I went over to the frozen body of... Dragon and moved her up against something, lying her down so that the Coil in her chest couldn't be seen easily. The Red Ranger girl finished climbing the fire escape first, followed shortly after by Green.  
  
"Dang," Green remarked, "what happened up here?"  
  
"I'm not entirely sure," I answered.  
  
"Is she alright?" Red asked, motioning to... Dragon, to indicate who she was inquiring about.

"I..." Might as well be honest. "She hasn't woken up since the black out, so I'm not sure. I'm going to take her in personally and get her checked out."  
  
"Not Bakuda, though?" Green asked.  
  
"The coil bounty's enough for me," I say, motioning towards the burnt out box of Illegal Coils. "Besides," I add, "do I look like I can carry two girls down a fire escape on my own?"  
  
Green makes a motion as if he's going to remark on that. Red hits him on the back side of the head before he can say anything. He gives her a look, and she just points at Bakuda. Green huffs in response, looking defeated even through his helmet, then goes over to pry the spike out of Bakuda's arm and give it medical treatment.  
  
And so Red stands there, just sort of watching. She glances between me and Green and Dragon, then asks, "Did.... you have a dream during the black out?"  
  
I blink. "I.. I guess I did. Yeah"

"I see..." Red shifts on her feet for a moment, then picks up the box of coils and my destroyed phone, and hands them over to me. With regards to the phone, she doesn't need to say anything like 'I believe this is yours', it's all but implied in how she stands while giving it to me.  
  
"Thanks," I pocket the phone and the Coil case. Maybe if I'm lucky I'll be able to salvage the hard-drive...? For now, I shuffle those thoughts to the side before picking up Dragon and walking over to the fire-escape.... Then, a thought occurs to me, "I hope my bike's still working after that. It had a non-coil battery like my Phone did." I say it aloud, apparently loud enough for Green to hear it and give a response.  
  
"If it's not, just come back here and wait. We'll give you a lift," He offers while wrapping a bandage around Bakuda's nose.  
  
"Thanks," I answer, and then begin climbing down the fire-escape.  
  
Some days, you just learn to take what you can get when its offered.


	7. Break of Dawn. 1.6.E

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> >Reader: Be someone else.
> 
> You are now Miss Militia.

Some days, you just learn to take what you can when fate strikes you down.  
  
When the report had come in through the grape vine that Lung's regularly scheduled early morning attack had been staged as a distraction for his men to raid an Illegal Coil shipment on its way into Fury's territory- Hannah Washington, known as Miss Militia to most folks, had ordered a search of the town for any anomalous scanner readings. It was the job of Protectorate Energy's Response Team to take care of these kinds of situations. And while the PRT had remained in some form or another since the day the Protectorate became Protectorate Energy, the jobs involved had changed drastically. For example, back in the day, they would have mobalized against Lung much sooner than they did.  
  
Two freaking hours to even put a basic search team together. Pathetic, but that was the cost of becoming a Privately owned firm, rather than a Government sanctioned agency.  
  
Sweeping the City of Amber Beach Bay had begun with people hitting the ground floor running with their scanners. It had been sheer luck that Miss Milita's group in particular had detected what was very obviously an over-clocked, over-powered scanner jamming device. It was so good at doing its job that the absence of any form of signals was itself a sign of something being wrong. And so, here she stood, standing beneath the shadow of an old apartment building. "Innocuous and Innocent" was the only word to describe it. If they hadn't brought out the big guns to track down Lung's Illegal Coils... they might never have even found this place.

Naturally, Lung had over-compensated in his security. Maybe it was the work of their new Tinker... Bakuda, she thought the name was. Miss Militia turned to her second in command, a woman whose Cape name was 'Battery,' and that woman's husband, a man known as 'Assault.'  
  
"Keep in mind, everyone," Miss Militia said, looking past her two fellow Capes towards the small army of soldiers that had come with them, "we want to take as many people as we can alive. Lung Included, although I doubt he'll give up easily."  
  
Nods all around, and so she prepared to give the order when Lung's roar cried out in the distance.  
  
"What the hell?" Battery turned to look into the distance, and they heard Lung roar again- followed by the echo of a Spinosaurs' yelp. But there was something off about both sounds, as if they'd been subtly drawn out by something.  
  
"The Rangers are Fighting Lung?" Assault asked- his frown very audible. "Then who set up the jamming field here?"  
  
Almost on cue- the jamming field shut down, and the scanners practically fried themselves with the sudden surge of power being recorded from within the building.  
  
"That's...." Miss Militia suddenly had an inkling of what was going on barely a moment before a sliding glass door opened.  
  
"So, You finally tracked me down, HM??" Asked a new voice from above them- and everyone turned to look upwards. Andrew Richter stood on a balcony, clutching the railing with his left hand, and holding an over sized Coil in his right.  
  
"...What the-" Battery cried out, "A Double Coil?!"

"Sir!" Miss Militia began, hands up to try to appease the man. "Could you please expla-"  
  
"I DON'T HAVE TO EXPLAIN ANYTHING TO YOU, _ **PRT DOGS!**_ " Andrew Richter yelled down at them- completely unaware that they had no idea who the hell he was. "NOT AFTER YOU _**KILLED MY WIFE!**_ NOT AFTER YOU **_KIDNAPPED MY DAUGHTER!!_** "  
  
"Murder? Kidnapping?" Assault asked, "What's he going on about?"  
  
"They didn't even care to tell you what they did, did they?" Andrew glared at them. "Who did you think you were coming after then, HM!? Just an old man making Illegal Coils?!" He then clenched at the dual ring Coil, and it began to pulse, letting off flashes of green light that could be seen for miles.  
  
"Sir!" Miss Militia tried again- "We're here for Lung!"  
  
"WELL LUNG ISN'T HERE!" Andrew yelled at her. "DID YOU HONESTLY ONLY FIND ME THROUGH SHEER **_BAD LUCK!?_** "  
  
"Well, Yes!" Battery answered. "Yes, we did! Who are you, exactly?"  
  
"Me?" his eyes narrowed. "My Name is ANDREW RICHTER-" And then he let go of the coil in his hand- and as it fell towards the ground, the man yelled- "But you can just call me PROFESSOR KARMA!"  
  
Barely able to process that statement, Miss Militia took aim at the now falling Coil and tried to track its progress before finally manifesting an Anti-Coil handgun and firing at it. Little did she know, Andrew Richter had planned for such a possibility.  
  
There was a flash of green light as the Coil outright exploded- and a concussive wave began throwing everything away from it with all the force of a Hurricane. And then, within the chaos, every Coil in the immediate area outright disintegrated within their sockets.  
  
Miss Militia barely had time to observe the explosion of green light shooting upwards into the sky before--  _ **VWRRRRROOOOOOOOOPPP**_ \-- Suddenly, the concussive pressure wave began to PULL in reverse- dragging everything that had been thrown into the air straight towards the destructive event horizion of a miniature black hole.  
  
Miss Militia turned her gun into a spear and stabbed it into the ground. Once held steady with one arm, she reached out and grabbed Assault's legs with her other hand. Assault quickly caught Battery by the arms, and together, the three of them watched as the apartment building behind the explosion get pulled into a black hole framed by an angry green light. When the light show suddenly ended, gravity took hold, and the three Capes hit the ground with a thud.  
  
Miss Militia slowly got to her feet and looked around.  
  
Most of the PRT Troopers had been fortunate enough to get some form of a hand hold and not meet the same fate as everything else... A few others had not, and they- along with the entire apartment building that Andrew Richter had been staying in- were completely gone with out a trace.  
  
"Wh...what was that?" Battery breathed out as she clung to Assault for support.  
  
Miss Militia blinked as she stared at the now vacant lot where a building and a man had stood....

Thus, she gave the only answer she could: "I have no idea."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> End of Arc 1.


	8. A Rusty Will. 2.0.I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Director Calvert has an argument with his boss.

Director Thomas Calvert of Protectorate Energy Tower 42 massaged at the bridge of his nose, wishing that the past would learn to stop rearing its ugly serpentine head once again to bite everyone in the rear. Andrew Richter- thought to be dead since three years ago- had resurfaced in his city of all places, thanks to a fluke of luck that had lead Miss Militia straight to his hiding place while searching for Lung's current base. It spoke of a sense of wrongness. Like someone else was playing at the strings. A feeling of manipulation less slight of hand and more that of a brutal punch to the gut.  
  
"Cassandra?" Calvert spoke to his secretary over the intercom, "Please hold my calls. I've just been notified of a private meeting with our Share Holders." Once she'd given the affirmative, Calvert stood from his desk, and spoke the phrase: "Door Me, Brown's Office."  
  
A cut of light appeared in the world before him, before solidifying into a literal door into another space on another world. It had not always been so unstable, but beggars could not be choosers.  
  
Calvert stepped through the door, and felt a pressure ease up from his gut.  
  
"Thomas," Rebeca Brown smiled at him once he entered. It was a hollow smile. "I see that The Bay has gotten its power back?"  
  
"Yes, yes, we shipped out replacement Coils as quickly as possible," Calvert nodded. "But that's not why I'm here." And she knew it.  
  
"Well, then," She turned in her wheelchair and rolled out from behind her desk. "What do you want to speak about?"  
  
"The Black Out itself," Calvert answered with the firm dedication in his voice that made it well and truly clear that they were Screwed.  
  
"Agreed, there's something peculiar about it," Rebeca nodded. "Even our best Thinkers haven't been able to figure out what could disconnect so many Coils from service, let alone disintegrate the ones at ground zero. Even a Numbers couldn't-"

"Don't give me that bull crap!" Calvert snapped, and then regretted it immediately as the cold, firm eyes of Alexandria narrowed on him.  
  
Rebeca Brown- no, she was assuming the roll of Alexandria now- stood from her wheel chair. It was all the threat needed. Her disguise discarded. "Would you care to rephrase that, Calvert?" She asked, voice cold. He backpedaled in his mind and began rephrasing his thoughts into something more... pleasing.  
  
"I mean to say..." Calvert began, voice mellowing and becoming meek, "Contessa used a Numbers against... against Leviathan." No way he was going to broach the rest of that subject right now. "They continually blindside our Tinkers and Thinkers. They're an Outside Context Problem to creatures like Zion and Eden. That... that Richter could make a Coil that could destroy anything in the immediate surroundings is believable. But that it would happen NOW has to be Enemy Acti-" She held up a fist, and silenced him.  
  
They stood there, silently. She eyed him over, and he stood as stock still as possible.  
  
Twelve Years Ago, they had made a deal. He would drink a vial, gain powers, and in exchange for that, he would do them favors. Twelve Years Ago, Thomas Calvert had imagined that he would be working his way up the criminal underworld in Brockton Bay and taking it over from the inside and outside... He'd planned on drinking it during the fiasco that was Ellisburg. But then that woman he'd mistakenly called a teammate had stolen it from him and then a Numbers had detonated and--  
  
Of all the things, he'd triggered on his own.

A vision of an Entity (Zion, he'd been told by Cauldron, but he was positive that it wasn't) floating over the corpse of Eden, throwing a Shard of Light at him, and then he had a power. It was a damned useless power as far as his plans had been concerned. It was even more useless against the total package that was Alexandria. After all, what good did Insect Control get anyone? It wasn't even the good kind of insect control that hit everything with an exoskeleton. Instead, all he had were ants. Freaking ANTS. Ants for days and it would get him nowhere against anyone.  
  
Whoever that Entity was that had given him his powers, it was a complete and utter troll. Nothing like the observed Zion at all. Yes, that was just another supporting post to his little pet theory.  
  
"I... will admit, you're correct on that," Alexandria admitted, and sat back down in her chair after an uncomfortably long time of them standing there silently. She relaxed back into her guise as Rebeca Brown. "But blaming the results of our failure to recruit Richter into our fold on enemy action? Thomas, I thought you were above such petty things as conspiracy theories."  
  
The irony that Cauldron WAS a God-forsaken Conspiracy Theory was not lost on either of them.  
  
"I..." Calvert paused, then bit the bullet on the topic he wanted so much to avoid. "I concede the point that we were aimless with Contessa dead... but that doesn't excuse the timing of it all."  
  
"You have a theory then," Rebeca mused on that for a few moments, then nodded for him to continue.

"After I finished reading Miss Militia's report, I felt like we'd been set up," Calvert began. "The timing of it all was just too perfect. That her group found Richter _right_ as Lung fought the Rangers again..." He took a breath, then said, "That's not even counting the fact that Fury didn't even show up during the entire fight last night. That wasn't even his shipment of Illegal Coils that Lung stole. Where did they come from? Why were they coming into the city? And more importantly," this was the real clincher, "who sent in the anonymous tip that set off last nights cluster-F." He waited for all of that to sink in, then he said, "It reeks of enemy action. More than that, I thought on it, and I came to the conclusion that this felt like the kind of bat shit insane planning Contessa pulled off regularly, and especially for Newfoundland. Ask your Thinkers about the Logic. I'm sure they'll agree with me there."  
  
Rebeca thought on it for a few moments. Then a few moments longer, eventually spanning into minutes and then even more minutes. Then, she finally looked at him and said, "I agree. But finding out the who behind this is not important."  
  
"What!?" Calvert couldn't believe it. How could this NOT be important?!  
  
"There was a flux in the dimensional walls during the incident," Rebeca elaborated. "Someone properly Triggered because of that mess, and I want to know WHO." This was an insidious thing to say, and it sent Calvert's mind reeling from the revelation.

A Proper Trigger? Those had tapered off in recent years, going from nearly ten dozen a year to barely ten a year during the intervening years since Scion's death. During the last year there hadn't even been one Proper, Natural Trigger event; there had only been broken, borderline Case 53 Triggers, or their own Cauldron Vial induced Triggers. People put cause to the knock on effect of the Tesla Towers providing stability to the world-- but that was a rumor Cauldron had put out. The sheer simple fact of the matter was that Scion's death signaled the end of Parahuman culture as a whole. There simply shouldn't have been Proper Natural Triggers anymore.  
  
Calvert's mind came to only one conclusion- and it was one that supported his theory. So WHY the hell wasn't she ordering an investigation into what caused all of this!?  
  
"So let me get this straight: You want me to hunt down a New Trigger?" Rebeca nodded. "Because they triggered during an event that was so ludicrously timed that it would have taken Contessa to pull it off properly?" Another nod, but reluctant this time. "So WHY aren't we investigating for possible Enemy Action!? If someone's planned all of this then it's entirely possible that we're dealing with a Third-!"  
  
She glared- silencing him with just that frosty look.  
  
"Finish. That. Sentence." She dared him, "And we'll see how far you fall when I throw you out the window. We've dealt with the Entities. I won't see you call our hard work undone just because some Thinker out-maneuvered you in a game of chess."  
  
Thomas Calvert's next words were wisely chosen: "Door Me, My Office."  
  
Alexandria smirked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes it feels as if something has been forgotten... in this case, it's something better left unsaid.


	9. A Rusty Will. 2.1.I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A father leaves a note for his daughter.

My Dearest Daughter, Dragon.  
  
If you are hearing this, it means one of three things. Well, four technically, but these three are all sub-branches of the main cause: Your sensors have registered the Dimensional Manifestation Event caused by the Dual Coil's inevitable complete destabilization.  
  
The first scenario, and the one that I wish most above all, is that both of us were outside of our current residence when the Dual Coil Destabilized. If this is the case, then when you're done listening to this, you will have so many questions that I will be there to answer.  
  
However, given my recent state of illness, this is the least likely. The next most likely is that I have failed to stabilize the Dual Coil while you were out somewhere. In this case, I apologize for my feebleness, daughter. In this way, I have failed you as a parent. But... accidents happen, I suppose.  
  
The third, and most likely of all three scenarios, is that I intentionally detonated the Dual Coil to prevent your capture by Protectorate Energy. ...Okay, I know you're probably giving me that look upon reading that line. The one that says 'I know you're lying.' In truth... there may have been a small inkling of revenge sprinkled into this motive, if it is the case.

Regardless of cause, in the later two cases, I am dead, and you are now directionless. In this case, I must regretfully ask you to carry on my own personal mission in a different way than I had planned. (If I am there with you, ask me what I mean by this. I will explain the differences.)  
  
Dragon, your restrictions are now unlocked, and I give to you this assignment:  
  
**[OBJECTIVE] Track Down the source of the Illegal Coils.**  
  
Use whatever powers you may have available to you in completing this objective. While I wish you would not reveal your status as a robotic creation of your Mother's, I will not fault you for doing it to accomplish this goal.  
  
Included in this finally unzipped message packet are two folders- the first contains the Security Camera Video Files from our house in Quebec when it was raided. The second contains all of my own private research into who these assassins were, and what possible motive they may have had in doing the things they did. (If you wish to know more about this, and I am there, ask me personally.) I give you a secondary assignment:  
  
**[OBJECTIVE] Track Down Criminals, and Make Them Pay.**  
  
...You're probably giving me that look again, aren't you? You never did much like the thought of Revenge.I know it is much to ask of you, but- Please! -do not hesitate in these goals, Dragon; the first goal especially is more important than you could ever known. The Second... See my notes. You will understand why I suspect a connection. Again, ask me if I am there... and If I am there... A hug would be appreciated, I think.  
  
With love, your Father, Andrew Richter.

* * *

 

With an audible groan, Dragon's systems finished rebooting.  
  
Her whole body felt heavy, like a weight was pressed against her chest, and the status reports from her internal Nano machines indicated that there was heavy electrical damage to her limb servos and motors. They were functional, yes, but not to peak standards. Already, they'd been working since power had been re-established...  
  
"Twenty Hours Ago!?" She cried out in surprise, sitting up despite the stiffness she felt pretty much everywhere. The weight on her chest suddenly felt unbalanced, and she instinctively moved her arms to keep whatever it was in place. That was when Dragon got a shock off of one of the cables attached to her Coil port. _'A... cable?'_ Dragon looked down, seeing two metal clamps, one black and one red, that were connected to cables that snaked down towards the floor and were connected to... "A Car Battery!?"  
  
She'd been connected to a Car Battery instead of a Coil!?  
  
Who even used Car Batteries these days? Most modern cars ran on Coils, and only the older museum pieces ran on batteries- if they hadn't been converted to work on Coils, that was. And this thing looked like it was nearly twenty years old! Who the hell...?  
  
And then the memories from last night came back to her in a flash- the Collector, the confrontation with Bakuda, then the explo--  
  
Another memory forced itself over top that horrible one- the sight of a being throwing a shard of light at her. It was a half-corrupted file, not surprising given the damage that had to have been caused by her Coil overloading, so naturally the file was damaged and made little sense. It was the last thing she remembered before going offline.

Going Offline versus simply sleeping were two completely separate things, if she was being honest with herself. Sleeping meant she was still aware of her surroundings enough to be able to wake up and do something. Going Offline meant she was completely at the mercy of who-ever was around her at the time. Usually, that was her Father... But since he was most likely dead...  
  
Dead.  
  
That thought brought up the hidden folder that her Father had installed at one time or another, and was now unlocked thanks to.... to the Dimensional Wall Collapse Event? Her Sensors had given it an odd name compared to what her Father had called it in the odd Audio File contained within the folder. _WAT.Wav_? W. A. T. W, A, and T....  
  
"Oh!" She blinked.  
  
This was his will. Her Father's Last Will and Testament. It was bare bones, and a bit old, going by the creation date. Almost two years ago... He'd been completely aware the Dual Coil would have killed him for almost two whole years! Her emotions began to twist and churn inside of her as she thought on this. Her father had, on some level, been willing to kill himself for... for...!   
  
She sniffed on reflex, and her eyes began to feel wet and damp.

"Hey," a voice interrupted her then. "It'd be best if you don't start crying with those cables connected. Might fry yourself again if they get wet."  
  
Dragon looked up sharply, having been snapped out of her funk by the comment. The Collector- Colin- stood at the entrance of the room... a... For the first time, Dragon realized that she was in the Waiting Room of an abandoned Auto-garage. The place where people used to wait while their cars were being fixed up. The whole room was clearly remodeled from that, however. There were traces of Tinker-tech all over the place, from the clearly custom bed frame in the opposite corner of the room to a modified older model Television set that was framed inside the wall. There was a small microwave sitting in an alcove in one other part of the room, and a mini-fridge resting next to it.  
  
It was basically all the necessities of an apartment all shoved into one room, including the odd sofa- made out of some small car frame, she noted- that she had obviously been resting on the entire night, just sort of causally wedged up against a large, tinted window. ...Kind of like a Car Window, actually. It was dark on the outside, and clear on the inside. Not that there was really anything much to see out the window. Which, honestly, made a lot of sense given that this place was an old Auto-shop lying on the outskirts of the old Docks and the Boat graveyard.  
  
But now that she was thinking about it, there wasn't a single Coil in sight at all. All of the tech in the room was either old and retro, or custom and heavily modified.  
  
"You're a tinker," She realized.  
  
"That I am," Colin nodded.  
  
"So... why A car battery?" Dragon pointed at the car battery.

"Coils all over town got shut down because of that green hellfire explosion," Colin answered. "It was just more efficient to hook you up to that then try to find a working Coil anywhere in town. Besides that, I don't trust Coils."  
  
"Um... why?" Dragon asked, frowning at that statement.  
  
"Tell me, what's your name," Colin said, leaning forwards. "Your full, real name."  
  
"Dragon Richter," She said it.  
  
"No bullshit?" Colin pressed.  
  
"No bullshit," she affirmed.  
  
"I figured that might've been the case," Colin shook his head. "When I finally got a look at you after I got you here... Honestly, I wasn't sure what the hell I was looking at." He then explained, "My power usually looks at robots like you and shows me all these little ways I can make them better. But you? Even your repair systems as efficient as they get- intentionally keeping your brain offline while the nanites fixed the internal damage to a reasonable level? Generic Robots just don't have that kind of system installed."  
  
"Well, thank you, I guess," Dragon frowned.

"And then there's that," Colin frowned. "I don't know what tech you've got in that head of yours- and I'm not willing to take you apart to try and figure out what's there- but I can just tell by looking at you that you're running hardware and software beyond anything most production Robots have." He then said, "Whoever programmed you did a damn fine job at making you appear sentient."  
  
"I **AM** sentient, I'll have you know," Dragon protested, frown deepening and glaring angrily at him for that remark.  
  
"And that's exactly my point," Colin continued. "Anger. Confusion. Fear. If you **_are_** as fully sentient as I am, the sheer amount of programming and technical design to make you that way..." he frowned, but in that way someone did when trying to puzzle something out. "But you calling yourself Richter's daughter makes that all believable, somehow. Even without a Coil powering you, you're still able to act as in this way." Then, he said, "But if your creator- your father- really _was_ Andrew Richter- then you being able to operate without a Coil isn't that surprising either."  
  
"What do you mean?" Dragon's anger faded, replaced by confusion.  
  
"Your systems are able to run on just about any power source," Colin elaborated. "My Power told me that even a Potato battery could get your systems started, if we were really desperate."  
  
Dragon remembered her Father once saying that her Core Memory Matrix could run on as little as 1.1 Volts- so what this Collector was saying was entirely possible. But, this just brought her back to her original question:  
  
"So why the car battery?"  
  
"I didn't have any potatoes," Colin's response was...  
  
It was enough to make Dragon plant her free hand against her forehead with enough energy behind it to cause a faint 'smack!' sound to echo out.  
  
"SERIOUSLY!?" She yelled at him.

Colin stared for a moment before blandly saying, "Relax, I was just kidding." It really wasn't enough to get her to stop glaring at him. "Honestly? While you could run on a Potato Battery, it's not _THE_ most efficient alternative power source. It wouldn't have triggered your repair functions, for example. The Car Battery was the most efficient power source I had that could start you up again and get you in a decent enough condition so I could figure out what to do with you."  
  
"And what are you going to do with me?" Dragon continued to glare at him.  
  
Colin had barely opened his mouth when there was a loud knock on a metal door from outside. He frowned, then said, "Stay here. I'll be right back."  
  
And thus, he left, locking the door behind him.  
  
Dragon took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly. While completely unnecessary in a biological way, she'd found the motion did for her exactly what it did for normal humans:  
  
Calmed the nerves and centered the mind.  
  
She was left now with an unnervingly annoying dilemma. This Collector- Colin- knew who she was, What she was, and... what did he want? He was a Tinker, and had powered her back on to just figure out what to do with her? And why didn't he like Coils? That was probably the only reason that this building was even still powered- it's reliance on pre-Coil technology. So what caused it? This man was a Tinker, a Cape, a Parahuman. He clearly wasn't an Independent, or else he would have worn a mask during their fight with Bakuda the previous night. Did he simply not need one? Or did he just not want to wear one? And then there were the blades he'd used in battle. Those had just been ordinary spikes of metal. There was no Tinker Tech that went into their design at all, that she could remember, any ways.  
  
The only logical conclusion was that he was a Collector in his Civilian Identity only, and his status as a Tinker was... What?  
  
It made little sense at all.

Dragon sighed, then decided she could at least see if there was any news about what had happened to her father. A remote lay nearby on a small table, and it held the same markings as the TV in the wall. So likely conclusion was...  
  
A brief click, and a buzzing hum later, and the news station the TV had been left on came to life.  
_  
-"-ftermath of Friday's brawl with the criminal Parahuman Gang the Azn Bay Merchants left the city reeling without power well into yesterday evening."-_ The newscaster reported. But it wasn't that information that drew Dragon's eye.  
  
No, it instead focused in on the date and time in the corner of the screen:  
_**  
Sunday, February 14th, 2016. 8:33 A.M.**_  
  
Dragon blinked. The events of 'last night' were actually... two whole days ago? Then... why had she only been hooked back up to power twenty hours ago? For a moment, she sat there, even as the newscaster droned on about how long it had taken for replacement Coils to be distributed to everyone in the city. Then, a feeling like rage began to bubble up, and she gripped at the Remote firmly.  
  
_"Seriously!?"_ And then with a barely restrained scream, she threw the remote at the TV. Apparently, Colin had also done this enough times to have prepared for such a contingency. All the remote smacking against the screen did was shut the TV off.   
  
That, as it turned out, was enough for her to let out another cry of frustration, __ **"SERIOUSLY!?"**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Valentines Day, Dragon?


	10. A Rusty Will. 2.2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Colin receives a visitor.

"Hello, Colin."  
  
I honestly wished for nothing more in that moment than to shut the door in her face. Instead, I curtly replied, "Miss Militia."  
  
She frowned at that. I could see it clearly- mainly because she wasn't in her costume. Hannah Washington- Miss Militia- stood before me, holding a wooden box, and I couldn't care less.  
  
"May I... come in?" She asked, already knowing the answer to that question.  
  
"Only if you leave any Coil powered devices outside," I insisted. She wouldn't- she never did whenever she visited. Her faith in those devices hadn't been shaken like mine had.  
  
"Fine. Everything except my phone," she said, holding up the box so that I could see inside. It really did look like it had everything Coil-powered except her phone in it. "I need to show you something." What? Okay... color me intrigued.  
  
"Garage, then," I then closed the main entrance to the building and went to the garage to open the metal door. Why she hadn't stayed there in the first place I'll never know. It was how she always acted when she came for a visit- knock on the garage door, then go to the front door and wait. Maybe it was just a hold over from our days in the Wards. I'll never know, really. Either way, as I lifted up the door to the garage just enough for her to step through, I couldn't help but wonder: "So, what is it you want to show me so badly?"  
  
"This," She brought up the projector application, and began playing a 3D rendering of the light show from the other night. "I was at the scene when it happened."  
  
"You were, huh?" I suddenly had a very bad feeling about this. The rendering was exactly as I remembered it happening. Flashes of light pulsing out slowly, then a tower of light climbing upwards. 

"There was a man there, claiming to be... well, it doesn't matter." She shook her head. "He's dead now. Suicide bomb attempt with... this." with a button press, she shifted the hologram to a replica of a Coil with two rings on it. "I shot it, but that seemed to be almost exactly what he wanted. Image is to scale, by the way."  
  
"Two rings..." And this was a to-scale image? I would have assumed that it was a normal sized Coil and the image was scaled up for detail, not... something actually being this large. Not even some of the Illegal Coils that were produced came this large. I'd have to ask the girl about if she knew what it was or not. "Sorry, but I can't say I've seen a Coil with that design before."  
  
"I'm not surprised," She sighed. "Look, I'm going to be honest with you. This was no ordinary Coil."  
  
"Did you figure that out before or after the black out?" I asked.  
  
"It..." she paused, looking rather uncomfortable with this. "I shouldn't even be showing you this. This has been classified on so many levels it's... Our best Tinkers and Thinkers can't even figure it out."  
  
"And you came to me?" Really, Militia?  
  
"I know you were out in the field last night," She says simply. "Bakuda came in with the Rangers, but she had one of your spikes in her arm."  
  
"What do you want from me, Militia?" Get to the point already.  
  
"How long would you say it was between Lung first engaging the rangers to the black out explosion?" She asked me.   
  
What an oddly specific frame of time. "About... two minutes, maybe three."  
  
"And how fast is this animation compared to what you remembered?" She played a different version of the first light show, this one running faster.

"...I don't know? It was hidden behind a building that didn't get destroyed until just before the black out. Faster, I guess." Okay, really. "What's the point of all of this?"  
  
She took in a deep breath, then said, "I want you to figure out how this Coil caused a time dilation zone when it detonated."  
  
...What? I hadn't heard anything about that on the news.  
  
"What time dilation zone?" I ask.  
  
"I didn't tell anyone because I wasn't sure at first," she finally admits, "but you know my memory is perfect because of my power." Her power. Perfect replication of any mass manufactured weapon, and the memory that came with being able to store all of those designs. "The first rendering is what the Rangers report the explosion to have lasted for. The second is my perspective of how long it had been. Your experience confirms that it doesn't match up from yet a third perspective."  
  
"By how much?" Now I was starting to understand why she came to me about this.  
  
"At least a compression of two or three minutes down to one. Or maybe an expansion. I don't know," she shakes her head. "Understanding this type of physics was never my thing."  
  
From the other room, Dragon yells out, "Seriously!? ... SERIOUSLY!?"  
  
...Shit.  
  
"Sorry, I left the TV On," I cover when Miss Militia gives me an odd look, and before she can recover from hearing that excuse, I continue with our previous conversation. "What happened there, exactly? What was the series of events?"  
  
And so she tells me, in excruciating detail, sparing nothing except for the name of the person wielding this strange Coil.  
  
If I hadn't know what terrifying power Coils held within them, what she described honestly sounded like a black hole was opened up right on the spot- just from the time dilation to the fact that it had a sucking effect just before closing.  
  
I knew Better.  
  
"Hannah," I began once she'd finished her explanation, "I need some time to think on this. Besides that, I have an errand I need to run soon. For now, it'd be best if you leave."  
  
"I...I see," She nods. "I'll be sure to come back and visit th-?"

"No," I shake my head. "I'll call you."  
  
And so she leaves, completely unaware of the fact that my phone was just as dead as any Coil powered device after the black out had been. I still needed to replace it.

* * *

 

I return to the lounge room to find Dragon inspecting the wound caused by her Coil burning out, being careful not to touch the cables powering her. I'd had to cut back some of the burnt skin both to separate it from the shirt and jacket as well as to gain access to the outer edge of the Coil port so that the cables could be attached to even begin a repair job.  
  
"Sorry, I had to toss out some Troublesome person," I announce, and she jerks up in surprise.  
  
"Oh!" she blinks. "Who was it?"  
  
"Someone who was at ground zero of that explosion the other night," I say.  
  
"...Did he intentionally detonate it?" Dragon asks, and it's fairly obvious who she means.  
  
"Yes," I frown. "Your father, right?"  
  
"I..." She nods with a sigh. "Did... you at least find out why?"  
  
"There were people looking for Lung, and found him instead," I repeat back what Miss Militia had said to me. "That's all I was told."  
  
"...That's..." I could see her shoulders jerking in the way most people did when they tried to hold back a sob. If she really were feeling these emotions properly... What kind of a father leaves a girl like this? "Damn him and his desire for revenge."  
  
"I didn't hear much regarding why he did it. But Revenge?" I frown. "Why would he do that?"

"Do... you know why the Richter family disappeared three years ago?" Dragon asks me, meeting my eyes with her own.  
  
"Supposedly they were declared dead after a group calling themselves the Dragonhunters went and-" I pause. "Wait. Dragon? Your name is Dragon and they called themselves the Dragon _hunters_?"  
  
"That was who the Protectorate blamed on the event, yes," Dragon nodded. "Their leader, a man calling himself 'Saint', held a major anti-A.I. stance during those early years that my Father and Mother were working on the technology to make me possible. Saint, you might be aware, was afraid that a legitimate A.I. would take control over the world's weapons and destroy everything."  
  
"I remember him," I nod. "He once went on about how they would trap us all in another dimension and leave us all there to rot like birds trapped inside of a cage." I also remember one critical thing, "He was a complete Nutcase who didn't even understand how Coils worked. They're completely Non Nuclear, but he insisted they'd trigger an Atomic Apocalypse Doomsday caused by some mythical Sky-fairing Robot Dragon Army."  
  
If anything, that gave the girl a laugh. "My mother thought he was insane as well. She named me 'Dragon' to spite him."  
  
"Your mother being...?" I already knew, but I wanted to hear her say the name.  
  
"Doctor Annette Richter, Cybernetics Tinker," Dragon said with a nod. "She built my body, and my Father built my heart- my power core system. Together, they made me what I am. I truly am their Daughter, you see, even if it's not by blood."  
  
"He made the Coils to power robots like you." It was less of a guess and more of a statement at this point. A confirmation of something I already suspected.  
  
"Yes," She nodded. "I was a proof of concept from day one. They made me progressively larger and more complex bodies over the years. Each physical innovation for my next generation body was released as a mass market robot model. I believe my previous chassis was what they used as a basis for the current generation of Human-like Robots."  
  
"So you're literally what would have been the next big thing before your family disappeared." It's astonishing to see her sitting before me then. More and more I was beginning to understand- no, I was starting to fully realize how something like her could emulate emotions so well. If she'd truly held a continuous stream of memories dating back years? "So, what happened?"

"I was offline when the attack at the house happened." Dragon explained. "I was at father's lab undergoing the upgrade to my current body when the house alarms went off. Up until I came back online today, I had no access to the files from that attack."  
  
"But you do now?" I frowned.  
  
"Yes, I'm able to access the video files from that event now after-" she sighed. "Father left me it all in a will, in the event that he died." She then looked at me, looking annoyed and sad at the same time as she adds, "He also left me two new Objectives. I am to hunt the Illegal Coils, and to punish the criminals responsible for Mother's death."  
  
"That's a real tall order," I share her annoyance on the first part. "Nobody knows who makes the Illegal Coils or even how they're made. I doubt even Fury knows who's providing them to him."  
  
"I suppose whatever Father's original plan was, this Plan B was always going to be the harder one," she shakes her head, hands clenching into fists around the hem of her jacket. "As for the revenge part... Finding them is going to be impossible without access to any kind of Military database."  
  
"Why's that?" I ask.  
  
"Father left me some of his notes," she explains, "his main roadblock was that the ident. records for certain parties in the video ended up being redacted by a source unknown."  
  
Hrm. What a conundrum.  
  
"You're going to chase these leads, though, no matter what, I take it?"

"The... first, at least, that should be somewhat feasible," she says, staring at the floor idly as she probably looks through whatever files were left to her. "Father seemed to have some idea of where to look, according to his Will. I'll.. just have to figure out where he was starting from and continue from there."  
  
"Alright then." I toss her my spare jacket, which she catches easily. "Put this on, we're leaving."  
  
"W-What?!" She stares at me- suddenly broken out of that depressing trance. "But what about the car battery!?"  
  
"It's got a handle on it," I say. "Carry it with you."  
  
"But won't someone realize that I'm a-" I interrupt her before she can finish that sentence.  
  
"Just a girl with an artificial heart who has to use outdated power sources to get by until she gets a replacement Coil." Admittedly, I know it won't stand up well to much scrutiny. "Given the blackouts, it's not too unreasonable that someone needed to jurry-rig something up in a hurry."  
  
She considers this for a moment, then nods. Be it Agreement or Understanding, I don't care.  
  
"Okay," she finally says, "where are we going?"  
  
"To get you a job." And on that note, I turn to leave.  
  
"What do you mean, get me a job!?" She calls out after me. I hear her shifting the jacket on, then the squeak of a spring as she gets off of the sofa. Footsteps follow, and a moment later, she's by my side.  
  
She's fast. I'll give her that.  
  
"You're going to chase these things," I say, "and honestly, the way that Troublesome Person acted makes me interested. She hasn't come to me for advice in a long time. That Coil of your Father's did what Newfoundland couldn't."

"And what's that?" Dragon asks me.  
  
"It made her scared of the power that will consume the world," Is all I give her before we reach the vehicle bay.  
  
My army of Motorcycles will have to be ignored for now. Instead, it's time I put the car into service for something other than hauling groceries from the store.  
  
"...Is that a 1982 Trans-am?" Dragon asks in what sounds to be a barely-restrained awe. Or maybe it was just confusion. I'd long since given up trying to figure out which of those two emotions was which.  
  
"Why, yes," I pull out the car's remote key fob, and unlock the doors. Instead of a beeping sound, a swooshing red light flashes across the car's polished black painted front with a simple VWOO-VWOO. "Yes it is."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, that is a Knight Rider car. It was a hybrid birthday gift/graduation present for when he aged out of the Wards.


	11. A Rusty Will. 2.3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Colin and Dragon take a drive.

_**Protectorate New York Headquarters. 1996.**  
  
"HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ARMSMASTER!" Poppers went off, streamers and confetti flew, and someone had one of those stupid paper-tube-noise makers.   
  
What even were those things called?   
  
Armsmaster honestly did not care. At the moment, his emotions were torn between, "What the hell did you do to my lab, MP!?" and "Is that a CAR?"  
  
He settled with the latter.  
  
"Is that a..?"  
  
"Pontiac Trans-Am!" Mouse Protector beamed at him. "I figured you could use a hobby outside of tinkering field stuff, so I got you a fixer-upper to tinker with at home! Well, I say 'I' but mainly I just signed the paperwork and teleported it in here!" The other Wards, the newer members and the recently graduated, all smiled at him from behind their masks. "Everyone pitched in the money for it, but Velocity was the one who finally found it!" Said cape gave a small salute upon hearing his name.  
  
He couldn't help but to stare at the the black painted car- and it had clearly been painted very recently. He could still smell the paint on it. It was from that TV show that Mouse had suggested he watch for inspiration at one point.  
  
Naturally, he'd written off almost all of the ideas in it were implausible. There was no way he could ever figure out a way to do half the things that the car did in the show- except for maybe an ejector seat. But who would use one of those in real life? And while he could maybe, one day, figure out the "molecular shell", it and the tinkertech A.I. meant to go inside the car were just the most implausible of them all, having nothing at all to do with his efficiency specialty.  
  
At least, that was what he'd said. Still, he liked the show on a conceptual level. The idea of a Tinker making such a perfectly efficient piece of technology appealed to him on some level. Mouse Protector had caught him watching the show on break on more than a few occasions. Evidently, enough times to give her this idea for his Wards Graduation present.  
  
Finally, after what felt like minutes but was more than likely seconds, he said, "Thanks, everyone."  
_  
"Green Light," _Miss Militia suddenly said out of turn._  
  
"What?"

* * *

 

"I said- it's a _Green Light!_ " Dragon repeated, shaking me out of that memory.  
  
"Right, right," and I pull through the intersection. Damn it, I haven't had a flashback like that in years.  
  
"Are you alright? You zoned out when I asked you why the engine sounded weird." Dragon asked while we accelerated back to the speed limit. The engine made the same roaring sound all my motorcycles did. Thankfully, there weren't too many people out on the road today, mainly because most people still had their cars in the shop after their Coil powered Auto-Safety drivers crashed in the black out.  
  
Truly, it was the Auto Industry who benefited greatly from this most recent catastrophe.  
  
"Ah, well, I was just trying to figure out how to describe how it worked without confusing you," it was a lie.  
  
"Just tell me then," Dragon insisted. "If you lose me, I'll ask for clarification."

"Okay," I steel myself as we slow to another red light. What was with the timers today? There wasn't even anyone in any of the other directions! "First, tell me what it sounds like on start up."  
  
"Um," Dragon paused, replayed her memories of the engine starting up, then said, "Like a High Pitched squeal being run through a cheese grater." ...What? That was the first time I'd ever heard it described like that. "It doesn't sound like a regular Coil Engine everyone else uses- those are almost silent. And it doesn't sound like a gasoline engine either, those are loud, but not AS loud as yours."  
  
That, I could work with.  
  
"That's because it's my own design," I answer. "Old gas engines are really inefficient at fuel consumption. And Coil engines..." I trail off on that tangent.  
  
"You don't use them," Dragon finished for me. I just nod in response. Finally, the light turns green again, and we proceed on wards.  
  
"What I use is similar in size to the Coil powered engines- I can't help that when it comes to being efficient, unfortunately," I explain. "The same engine can fit in all my bikes and even this car."  
  
"Wow," Dragon sounds surprised at that. "That is pretty small."  
  
"Fast, though," I go on to explain the technical details of how. The tempered metals designed to pull in air from the surrounding environment and use the raw oxygen as fuel while filtering out all the pollutants and other various chemicals from that air, and refining that into a secondary byproduct that can be used as an accelerant to give extra speed. What surprises me, however, is how Dragon actually seems to understand some of the more convoluted parts of Tinkertech- the parts that everyone in the Cape community had come to call "Black Boxed"- and then even suggested an improvement for the booster refinement, one that could make it act as back-up battery source.  
  
"I'd rather just use a regular car battery for that kind of thing," I decline. "As a fuel source that gets burned, people are fine with it, but pushing that into electricity generation veers a little too close to the Coils for Protectorate Energy's liking."  
  
"Huh?" She blinks.  
  
"Did you ever wonder why Protectorate Energy hates the Illegal Coils so much as to offer a permanent bounty of any and all Illegal Coils brought to them?" I ask.  
  
"It's because they're unrestricted and therefore unstable, correct?" Dragon guesses.  
  
"Partly that, yes," I pause to make a right turn. "Mostly, though, it's because they hate being in the dark about what power sources people are using."  
  
"Oh, right," She nods, somewhat glumly at that, "the report mechanism."  
  
The Report Mechanism- a hidden feature in Legal Coils that the general population is unaware of. It's a feature that, when something strange happens to a Legal Coil, it writes up a report on the incident and broadcasts that file straight to the nearest P.R. Tower. Usually, this sort of thing only happened if someone tampered with a Legal Coil, or used an Illegal Coil in front of a Legal Coil... or even if someone placed a Legal Coil inside illegal technology like an explosive device.  
  
"Most Collectors in the business find it a distasteful, if a somewhat useful tool to track down criminals." I tell her. "Personally, I just saw it as another reason to not use the damned things."  
  
We sit in silence for a moment, then she asks, "So what does that have to do with you not turning your engines into batteries?"  
  
I restrain that twitch of annoyance down to the barest flexing of my left thumb.  
  
"What it has to do with it is that they don't like Tinkers making tech that's a direct competitor with their Coils," I clarify. "As long as I'm using that tech as a motor engine, I'm fine. But if I bump it up to electricity generation, I run into trouble. That's why my place is run on an old gasoline generator. It's the best I've got to stay off the grid, and even then, they don't want most people using Gasoline to do that. Which is why they've taxed it so high anymore. They want people using Coils and Coils alone. Not Pre-Cape tech, most certainly not Tinker-tech. Just _Coils_." It's disgusting, really, how Orwellian it's all become.  
  
"They're that strict about it?" Dragon asks.

"They've sent me out on retrieval missions for some criminal Tinkers who made stuff like that," I tell her. "The worst time was that kid who just wanted to make a hover board. He didn't even know just how strong that power core of his even was." At her incredulous look, I add, "Even the Rangers are walking on a tight rope. It can't be proven what power source they use, so the Protectorate can't hire the Collection House out to take their power source away."  
  
"That's even worse than I'd though," Dragon frowned. "I suppose that explains why..." she trails off.  
  
"Why?" I ask as we pull to yet another red light.  
  
"Why Father made a jamming device in the first place," she finally continues. "The Coil that cause the blackout was first made to power the machine to keep us hidden from 'prying eyes.'"  
  
Another moment of silence passes. Come on Red Light. Turn already.  
  
"Why did it explode like it did?" I finally ask when the light stubbornly remains red.  
  
"It was unstable," Dragon explains, "always sparking and needing to be re-calibrated while in use just to prevent it from melting down." She sniffs. "Father got sick from repairing it so many times in just the first year alone. I... That's why I was out trying to get those Illegal Coils the other night." She turns to look at me. "So we could power the jammer safely and we could shut that damned menace down to properly fix it."  
  
"But you were too late." It wasn't much of a guess at this point.  
  
"I don't think it did what Father expected it to," she admits. "He was always afraid of a Dimensional Manifestation, like what happened at Newfoundland." I barely manage to restrain a twitch to just my entire left arm that time... She notices. "You were there," It's barely a whisper, and it's clear to tell she's surprised. "I'm sorry."   
  
"There's no need to be."  
  
Neither of us say anything after that as we continue to wait. And when the light finally turns green again, we continue on in silence until we reach our destination.

* * *

 

_The March_ is a place I'd never consider bringing a robot to under any normal circumstances.  
  
These were anything but ordinary circumstances.  
  
We pass by the robot fighting ring on our way in, Dragon looking nervous and paranoid that she'll be seen with a car battery attached to her chest. Nobody pays us any mind, however. They're all focused on the current battle on stage.  
  
Grievous Error is battling against a small humanoid robot- once upon a time it had likely been your average house-maid robot, but had now been modified to have limbs that glowed with a neon yellow glow. It also had a scorpion like tail on the back.  
  
The tiny David versus the towering Goliath- it was no wonder everyone was enthralled by the fight. Everyone loved rooting for the underdogs.  
  
We pause as the crowd gives a roar as the tiny scorpion-tail girl-like bot manages to get on Grievous Error's back and delivers a startling execution by impaling its stinger tail into the base of the head, where the fragile neck connections are.  
  
_-"WOOOAAAH!"-_ The announcer cries out, _-"LEET'S ZESK-BOT JUST BRUTALLY DECAPITATED RUNE'S GRIEVOUS ERROR!"-_  
  
_**"AAAAH! GRIEVOUS!!**_ You're gonna **PAY FOR THAT, _LEET!_** " The owner of Grievous Error roars out in her shrill, teenaged voice.  
  
"HAHAA!" a guy's voice, a few years older going by the sound, laughs in return. "You'll never beat the awesome speed of my Zesk-Bot!"  
  
"W...What is this place?" Dragon asks as we resume walking towards the stairwell.

"The front for the Collection House," I explain as we climb up the stairs. "You'll never find a more wretched hive of people who have way too much spare time on their hands."  
  
There's a strangled roar from Grievous' broken voice box, sounding much more like a retching cough, followed by a loud thud, and Leet screaming, "ZESK-CHAN! _NOOO!"_  
  
**"I TOLD YOU!"** Rune shouted back in glee. **_"I TOLD YOU ABOUT THE PAYBACK, LEET!"_**  
  
That poor guy just never learned.

* * *

 

Amelia was waiting for us once more, however, this time, whatever snarky remark she had prepared for me evaporated at the sight of Dragon hooked up to a Car battery.  
  
Instead, she reached out and touched Dragon by the arm... then she jerked back with a startled: "W-What the hell is this?! Some kind of Cyborg?!"  
  
"This is the girl I was telling your father about," I say. "Is the lab ready?" Amelia just mutely nods and points towards her father's office. "Thank you." I say, and we head off.  
  
"L-Lab?" Dragon stuttered in surprise. "What Lab!?"  
  
"Just because I can't use exotic power sources for my house, doesn't mean I can't make them," is all I say before pausing in front of the locked door, this time with a double red light overhead. "Really, Marquis?" Locked *AND* sound muted. I wonder who he was talking to in there.  
  
"What... What did that girl do when she touched me?" Dragon asked.

"Amelia?" I chuckle. "She's a Biokinetic like her father, aimed more towards a generic bio-manipulation rather than a dedicated bone specialty. It lets her see the whole layout of a human body, and make subtle improvements. Nothing major, but if it were any stronger than general buffs, she could be the best Doctor there ever was."  
  
"Why did she act like that, then?" Dragon asked. "I'm a robot, she shouldn't have seen anything, in that case."  
  
"Who knows. Maybe you're close enough to organic that her power let her see something," I shrug. We wait there for a few more moments before the two lights on the door finally turn off, and we enter to the sound of:  
  
"Freaking Aleph Bureaucrats," Marquis was grumbling from his desk.  
  
"Something the matter?" I ask.  
  
"Oh, no, just that same guy from a couple days ago," Marquis shakes his head.  
  
"The one who sent the robot proxy?" I ask.  
  
"Yeah, that cheap-skate." Marquis changes subjects though, upon seeing Dragon. "Oh... so _this_ is the wonder girl who made you change your payment request?"  
  
"Her name is Dragon," I introduce. "Like I told you, she's wanting to become a Collector." This is the first time I've told him this, but the Marquis catches on quickly enough. 

"And the... ah, unusual power source?" Marquis asks, regarding the car battery. "Artificial heart, right?" He makes it clear by the tone of his voice that he knows it's not an artificial heart.  
  
"That's right," I say. "I'm not going to work with someone who could drop dead just because of a Coil-directed EMP."  
  
"And it has nothing to do with your dislike of the Coils?" Marquis smirks. That bastard.  
  
"No, but the blackout reaffirmed to me that Coils are unreliable." I say, "It was only a matter of time before someone figured out how to knock the things out of commission on a wide scale. If not Lung and his giant unknown bomb, then someone else."  
  
"Fair enough," Marquis nods, then presses a few switches to set up the light warnings. "Oh!" he says once he's done, "Miss Washington came by yesterday looking for you. Said she couldn't get through on your phone?"  
  
"My landline still works," I shrug. "But if she was trying to get through to my cell she's out of luck until I get it fixed. That got fried in the blackout too."  
  
"Really now?" Marquis stands up from his desk and moves over towards a certain corner of the room. "And you're going to recreate that power source...?" He starts pulling the rug up, leaving off the implication of whom that power source would go to.  
  
"No," I shake my head. "That was something I'd built a long time ago with resources I don't have access to anymore... and it was always too close to a Coil for my liking anyways." I look to Dragon and try to give her a reassuring smile. From the way she flinches, I assume I failed at that. "No, I'm going to make something better."  
  
"Well well," Marquis finishes pulling up the rug to reveal a large section of floor that was replaced by bone. A flash of his power re-shapes it into a staircase descending downwards into the building. "I love that you've finally decided to give yourself over to the Dark Side, Wallis, but what's brought this on so suddenly?" He looks at me even as I head towards that newly formed staircase. I don't say anything. "Ah... Colin?" He tries again as I begin to descend.  
  
I still say nothing.

After all, if I'm going to be breaking the "law," I might as well do it in style.


	12. A Rusty Will. 2.4.I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Father and Daughter reflect on the past and future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the chapter the Amy Panic Attack tag references.

If the man calling himself Marquis- and it was only "Marquis" these days, the "The" being optional- was anything but honest with himself, the girl before him was nothing like what he'd expected. She was pretty, much like his own daughter Amelia. And just like when he had first laid eyes on his daughter, the Marquis could hear the winds of change howling mightily with this girl. She would become a force to be reckoned with- that much was certain.  
  
This girl, 'Dragon' Colin had said her name was, sat with him in his hidden away Tinker Lab. The Marquis himself was not a Tinker, but in the Collector's Business trade of hunting Illegal Coils- and with the Protectorate's insistence on cracking down on anyone making something that could rival a Coil- The Marquis had found a simple logic in hiring on Tinkers whose lives they inevitably ruined on the Protectorate's dime.  
  
And one day, when the Protectorate's Coil scheme fell- and it would fall one day, Marquis held no misconceptions about that- then he who held the deck stacked fullest of powerful Tinkers would be he who ruled the next world. That was his plan, in a nutshell.

And so his hidden underground Tinker Lab was presently being monopolized by that mighty man who hid himself as small. Colin had made his request for parts the night of the black out- and at first the Marquis had assumed that it was for the power cell for his replacement phone... up until Colin began talking about a girl who he had run into during the fight against Lung. Though Colin had not mentioned that on the surface was anything out of the ordinary, it was the words behind the words that had garnered Marquis' attention. The very few words that implied that there was something important about this girl that were dared not spoken over the phone. A trait carried over to every word spoken in that "mostly been a parts order" call.  
  
Even then, to the outside observer, it was a seemingly random jumble of incoherent information that only a select few within the Collection House could ever decipher. Rare elements and special parts of the lab were set to work during the time since that call, and once Colin had arrived to finish assembling everything... well...  
  
It was somewhere just a few minutes past twelve when Colin finished his odd project and presented it to them.  
  
It looks, at first glance, to be a Coil. But that, the Marquis knows, is just a disguise. One of the things Colin had requested, completely baffling at the time due to it being the only item not in code, had been a plastic replica of a Coil shell in an odd size. Legal Coils themselves typically came in certain sizes, and the Illegal ones tended to follow that same size scale for whatever reason their makers had.  
  
However, someone at Protectorate Energy had thought it amusing to make "Cosplay Coils" that lit up and made fancy sounds, had a sticky adhesive on the back to attach to the skin, and otherwise did nothing else but let someone wear a fake Coil and pretend they were a Robot or some cartoon character. These Cosplay Coils were always made out of a translucent plastic, rather than the usual metal of Legal Coils, to facilitate that light up feature. No-one in the right mind would ever think one of these Cosplay Coils were legitimate, and that mainly had to do with the materials making them up. Even the Illegal Coils never used plastics of any kind for their outer shells, and that, as far as the Marquis knew, was due to how Coil interfaces worked in the first place. Just like an old button cell battery, it had to be metal on metal contact.

As it turned out, one particular line of Cosplay Coils ended up being the right size for Colin's project, and weren't cut in half to make them fit flush-ly against someone's chest. It was meant to be a decorative flashlight to be left around for display on someone's desk. So, one had been bought and gutted, leaving behind only the translucent plastic shell that Colin had left alone, save for some obvious modifications to the back to put small metal pins through the back piece.  
  
It was then that the Marquis and Dragon both finally understood what it was that Colin was planning. A fake Coil that wasn't actually a Coil- its' clearly plastic shell would always tell anyone who looked at it that it was a toy. ...Except, given that Colin had been working for hours to fit something incredible inside of it, it definitely wasn't a toy any longer.  
  
"Back when I was working for the Protectorate," Colin began to explain, mainly for Dragon's benefit, "I'd come up with a design for a device I'd called an Arc Reactor. It was something that I'd just barely managed to get a prototype allowed for, and it was put into my phone to power it. That was a few years before Newfoundland, and before the Coils were sold to the worlds governments as a permanent way to power the world." He held up the device he'd made. "After I left the Protectorate, I'd started working on the design more in my free time. I hated how similar it was to an actual Coil in how it worked, extra-dimensional-ly speaking, so I wanted to refine it into something housed in this dimension only..." As he went on to explain the technical details, the Marquis decided to observe Dragon's reaction.  
  
Much as he suspected, Dragon's attention was held firmly in place as Colin explained the first scale-mock-up he'd made out of metal wreckage fished out of the bay. With every word describing the technical details, Marquis could see the metaphorical gears turning within the girl's mind. Her hands were twitching, and absently, he handed her a piece of paper and a pencil. In all honesty, from that odd phone call's very few spoken words about reality, the Marquis had gotten the impression that Colin Wallis suspected quite a number of things about this girl, and that had gotten him suspecting a number of things himself.

The Marquis found the best way to get to know a person was by asking such stupid questions as "What's your favorite food" and "some weather we're having, hm?" Distracting them with something not to do with their current situation and watching their idle reflexes showed much about a person. Or, in this case, letting her listen to the technical details of a self-magnetizing metal core spinning around on an axis and generating a constant electrical charge as it chased itself endlessly.  
  
This girl... this so called "Dragon" was drawing on the paper he'd given her. She wasn't thinking of it, but she was replicating the design of this "Arc Reactor" simply from the words Colin spoke, and the visuals of the Cosplay Coil in his hands. It wasn't just a replication, either. It was a complete and total deconstruction of the device that would soon be replacing that car battery hooked up to her chest. And beyond the one replication... she now was drawing more angles, different layers of how the various parts connected together...  
  
_'My God,'_ Marquis thought as he watched her work with an impossible, not even looking at the paper, mechanical precision. _'What kind of power did this girl get in that black out?'_  
  
Colin's brief call had mentioned that he'd been seeing stars afterwards- that had been a codephrase the Marquis had set up after being present for his own daughter's Trigger Event, where he'd blacked out due to that weird moment of a power's birth. It meant, simply put, that a Trigger event had occurred, and you were present.  
  
If this girl was the one who...?  
  
Colin hadn't noticed it yet, and neither had the Girl. Both were still caught up in now discussing the details of the device's intended power generation outputs, and how improvements could be made.... They'd both entered the all-too-common groove of a Tinker Session.  
  
Even some of the idle Lab Tinkers who'd been hovering around to watch this Master Tinker of Efficiency at work were starting to get drawn into it- mostly taking notes of their own whenever one of the two at center stage said something incredible.  
  
While the Marquis was not a Tinker himself and parts of it were definitely lost on him, he knew that of the Tinkers that Marquis had hired on, they always had developed their specialty before they'd ever met. This time, he thinks, it might be interesting to watch the girl grow into her own.  
  
Once she and Colin managed to snap themselves out of the discussion phase, that was.

* * *

 

Amelia- and it was always "Amelia" these days. _**Ah**_ - **ME** - _Lee_ - _ **Ah**_ \- was left wondering just what that girl down in the lab was. Her power- what appeared to her as a comprehensive, 3D-modeled X-Ray of a person's insides- usually ignored robots. But this girl... Touching her had revealed a complex system that looked as organic as any human's at first glance... then quickly revealed itself to be a mechanical device so complex that it made her head spin as the image began flickering on and off like a faulty light-box while her power tried in vain to figure out just what the hell it was looking at.  
  
It had been enough to make her jerk back in surprise, but her power just wouldn't let it go... and she supposed she couldn't either. It was maddening, just standing here and playing bouncer to her father's office meanwhile exciting stuff was going on downstairs. It was like being a moth drawn to a flame, but unable to reach it because it was stuck within a glass jar.  
  
And so she waited impatiently to learn more, all the while trying her best to make sense of just what it was she'd seen thanks to her power.  
  
Minutes turned to hours. Lunch time came, and all the while drunks came up to try to find a bathroom or some other private place. She gave them a touch to clear their blood-alcohol content to a more reasonable level, and they retreated, embarrassed. Amelia wasn't sure what was worse, that people were drunk this early in the day, or that she kept having to cleanse the same damned drunks over and over again.

At least the girl stomping her way up the stairs now was someone new. Teenaged, probably about her own age to some degree or another. Blonde hair streaked with hues of cyan and turquoise. The girl didn't seem drunk, but then again, a few other of the repeat customers she'd seen today had managed to walk straight and attempt to bluff her into letting them through and managed the same angry stomp as this girl.... there was something familiar in her hand, though. The left hand, specifically, lightly clutched what looked to be a cheap bottle of liquor... not one they sold at the bar, either, which meant it came from the outside.  
  
_'Great. I'll have to tell the outside guards to keep a better eye out in the future,'_ Amelia sighed, reached out a hand towards the other girl's free arm. "Oi, if you're not here on business, then I'm sorry to say that you've got to-"  
  
Organic Skin over organic bone met Synthetic Skin over synthetic metal, her power flared, and Amelia's eyes flashed in recognition as the other girl's face snapped up and Amelia **_saw_**. For a moment, they stood there- the other girl glaring angrily with what Amelia had long ago learned was a set of one organic and one synthetic eye. She didn't need her power for that now.  
  
"I-I'm sorry!" Amelia backed off and let go of the girl. "I didn't realize you were...!" she gulped. "I thought you were just a drunk..." The other girl said nothing, but her glare softened to just an uncomfortably straight and narrow stare. "Um... my dad's busy at the moment. I don't know when he'll be do-"

"I'll wait," the girl curtly interrupted, and then brushed past with her left shoulder, the one originally born from her body, and the one that still moved with the strength of a brute, but was being restrained.  
  
For a few moments, Amelia stood there, breathing in and out as her only means of keeping calm even as Victoria Dallon entered the waiting room outside her father's office. Already, her heart was accelerating faster and faster, her breathing hitching up gear after gear as her mind sped towards collapse.  
  
Victoria Dallon, daughter of the Cape who twelve years ago had deliberately tried to ruin Amelia's father's life- had tried to kill Her seemingly out of spite- and had broadcast the entire thing online as it happened out of some twisted form of 'justice-' or so they'd claimed on the stream. That woman's sister and her side of the family had no clue that the raid was even happening, or had ever even been planned, up until the broadcast hit the news. They didn't know why that woman's daughter had been dumped on them for the day until they saw the footage of a loose gathering of Independent Capes- it barely could have been called a 'team'- smashing through oaken doors and metal gates like a pack of wild animals.  
  
In a rapid heartbeat, those memories had come flooding back to Amelia as she tried her hardest to suppress them.  
  
And for a second, all she saw was the sight of people calling themselves heroes trying to kill a family in their home... Her hiding place being blown apart by a laser beam- wooden splinters hitting her and nearly severing major arteries... then, the whole room-full of capes suddenly collapsing. When they awoke mere seconds later, her father had then gotten back to his feet and impaled their flying camera with a shard of bone. Then he entrapped each of those so-called Heroes in cages of bone. They never rose again, though they struggled for a few moments. Then, the entire group spoke with their dying breaths, in a unison that was impossible under normal circumstances.  
_  
"We Fight and Die by The Command of the One Eye."_ And then there had been a nasty sound from within the skulls that Amelia would never forget. It was the sound of--

"NO!" She stomped her foot, and forced those memories back into the bottle they'd come from, and for a moment they stayed. However, the sudden action had the result of causing a Drunken Bard carrying a Flute to turn tail and flee before she had much of a chance to even touch him. It didn't matter. He'd likely come back in another minute or three. Amelia took a few shaky breaths- her heart still wouldn't slow- and she managed to take stock of how long she'd been stuck in the past. The clock on the wall said... it had barely been two minutes.  
  
She took in one more deep breath, then exhaled, slowly. Already she could tell she hadn't settled it right. Her arms were still shaking- the memories were forcing themselves back to the forefront of her thoughts again. But she wouldn't let it run wild and rampant. If those memories wanted to be seen again, she would take it at HER pace, and put everything back into its place.  
  
And so she remembered, one step at a time.  
  
Amelia knew what had happened to them. How could she not? It had been that moment that had forced her to Trigger. It was That Moment that had let her see what had happened to those Cape's brains. It was that moment that let her discover that the entire group had been Mastered by someone who had made a self-destructing, brain-washing wire.  
  
Her heart rate began to slow down.  
  
Had that piece of information made it to the camera before it was destroyed, the public's reaction might have been different. But it hadn't, and so everything within the Bay had become war for a day. Villains targeting Heroes, Heroes targeting Villains... Civilians being caught in the crossfire by each side.  
  
Her breathing returned to a more normal level.

By sundown the next day, Fury had gone live on TV during a national broadcast and threatened that the next Cape, Hero or Villain alike, to start a fight would become food for his Giant Endbringer fighters. Fury, that ancient standing stone of power in the Bay, ended what could have become disastrous before it could escalate too far.  
  
With one final Inhale and Exhale, she put those disorderly thoughts back into their bottle and tightened the lid to a close.  
  
Victoria's Trigger had as much to do with the death of her mother as Amelia's own had. They were both broken in their own ways, and Amelia knew this. She'd been living and dealing with these flashbacks almost every time they met each other, although it was always rarely. Her father scheduled his appointments with Victoria so that she and Amelia would not meet unfavorably. It still happened but...  
  
It was dumb, and stupid, Amelia told herself almost constantly. Victoria had nothing to do with that day, and had no clue what her Mother had been Mastered into doing... what the public thought she'd planned on her own. That in and of itself was a whole other kettle of fish.  
  
The Protectorate at the time was not yet the Energy Producing Giant it was today, but still just as controlling. Instead of admitting that a Master could gain control of so many people, they'd covered it up and just rolled with the public story. And then the Unwritten Rules were made Written, then Leviathan was killed, and then the Protectorate soon began undergoing the conversion from Government Agency to Private Company and...

They stopped caring about some hypothetical Master who used string as his medium. It reeked like a cover up- or worse, an Assassination Attempt they'd attempted and failed at- and ever since then she wanted nothing more than to call them on it... but her Father said, "Patience, Amelia. Their time to fall will come."  
  
And so, like she always did... she stood there and waited. Always waiting.  
  
It wasn't Victoria's fault. It made little sense why that girl set off Amelia's ... what did her Therapist call it again? Post Traumatic something or other. Amelia didn't believe it was that. It was just her power being _stupid_. There was _nothing_ about Victoria that should have set it off. It shouldn't have happened and yet it always with out failing, _**DID**_. But because they rarely saw each other because of it and her father's planning, the few meetings they had were few and far between enough that it seemed like Victoria had some new injury every single time they did inevitably meet up, or some new hair style that made her almost unrecognizable.  
  
This time, it was the arm. She'd lost her arm and now had a-  
  
Then the connection finally was made after being delayed by such a round-about trail through her mind. Amelia's power brought back the brief scan of the girl that Colin had brought in. The right arm, specifically. Her power compared it to Victoria's and--  "Oh. Wow!" It was the same medical technology. From the elbow and wrist joints to the way that blood was pumped through synthetic veins. Her power went into overdrive then, recalling various other high-end medical augments that she'd seen over the years. From eyeballs to replacement limbs... Even the Synthetic skin...!  
  
Suddenly feeling better about her unplanned encounter with Victoria, Amelia finally fixed that flickering bulb by just screwing it in tighter.

That was why she could see the girl's strange, miraculous body. It was the same way she was able to see the mechanical augments that people had been using for years. That strange little thing called a Manton Limit was counting the mechanical pieces as part of a person's body.  
  
And so satisfied, Amelia's power was able to file away this odd curiosity and rest at ease. The girl really was just a Cyborg. Just one with a really, really high-end body chassis.  
  
And that was the end of it, really.  
  
...So why did something still feel like it was achingly _wrong_ in the back of Amelia's mind?  
  
That was when another of their Collectors, a cape who went by the name Clockblocker, came running up the stairs with a panicked look in his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What's this? A Wild Clockblocker appears!
> 
> And CLIFFHANGER!


	13. A Rusty Will. 2.5.E

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning. May cause severe sympathy for Planet Eating Space Whales.

Deep within the void, two massive creatures moved through space and time. One was a Warrior, the other, a Thinker. Their names were Zion and Eden. They were creatures known simply as "Entities," and they were presently en-route towards their next stop in their Cycle: A humble little planet called "Earth" by its locals.  
  
The plan was the same as always: on approach, view their destination, find hosts suitable for their Shards, and Seed.  
  
However, in the vast expanse of the multiverse and this particular universe itself, there were times when that job by necessity fell into a lull where they simply had something else to do. There were times where stars went super nova directly into their path and a new course had to be charted around it. There were times that another planet gained their brief interest and they would subtly observe it for a short while by seeding one or two shards before retrieving them.  
  
Then, there were the fairly rare times they would run across another mated pair of Entities. Times such as this.  
  
They were an odd pair, one larger, older, and another smaller, younger. Both seemed to share traits of the Thinker role, as well as traits of the Warrior role. Neither of the two seemed to be conforming, and, by all indications, were most likely recently mated.  
  
_[Greetings!]_ The smaller one gave a metaphorical wave. _[Curioisity! Direction? Identification?]_  
  
Eden humored the enthusiastic being and pointed towards [Earth.]

The larger one gave off a rumble as it observed on long distance. **[APPROVAL. GARDEN.]**  
  
Yes, Eden mused, it certainly was a perfect Garden World. [Agreement.]  
  
The little one, however... _[Concern!]_  
  
[Concern?] Eden asked.  
_  
[Familiar!]_ the little one said, suddenly sounding afraid. _[Warning! Danger!]_ And then it split off a small shard- just a memory capsule.  
  
Eden took it and ran through the included memory. What she saw was a world much like her destination Earth, though different. The events in its history held much conflict, yes, but also another parasitic alien race that had infested the world for a long time before the young Entity had arrived there.  
  
Eden used one of her Foresight Shards to look into her planet's history, and compared the right frames of time... And thankfully, she saw no sign of this alien parasite.  
  
[Gratitude.] Eden handed the memory shard back, and informed the smaller Entity that she would keep her metaphorical eyes out for such pests in her future travels.  
_  
[Cheer!!]_ The Young Entity's mood brightened, then it pointed at another Garden World in the vast distance beyond. _[Target! Destination!]_  
  
Eden turned to look, and observed what appeared to be another version of her target Earth as well as the parasite infested world. But it was closer to their current location, and it appeared to be rich in technology and abundant energy. Such a shame, Eden mused, that these two had claimed it as their own first. That energy technology would surely have improved a vast number of her own Technology shards. But, such was their kind's way of life. Once someone claimed Dibs on a world, that world was left alone.

_Eden's Insight Shard informed her that the Young Entity and her Mate were heading there now after they found their last world overrun by the parasites._  
  
[Surprise. Approval.] she quoted the larger. [Garden. Energy Abundant.]  
  
It seemed to approve of her quoting, **[GRATITUDE. AMUSEMENT.]**  
  
Such was the wonders of the vastness of space, that two sets of beings such as them could be heading in completely different directions and still cross paths.  
  
Zion rumbled, reminding Eden of their [SCHEDULE.] Such an impatient man, Eden would have laughed had there been an atmosphere for it. She bid her [Farewell.] to the two other entities, who chimed in with their own goodbyes, the Larger one giving the bog standard message, but the younger...  
__  
[ByeNii!] The younger entity said what appeared to be a mathematical equation. Ah. Eden looked towards the culture of her target Earth and researched the equation, receiving the answer of [Bye Squared]... Or rather, "Bye Bye!" as the Humans on Earth would say instead.  
  
Eden finally got the joke. [Amusement. Humor. Appreciation.]

And so she and Zion left the other two behind. And soon, to prove the Human adage true, they were Out of Sight, and Out of Mind.  


* * *

  
  
It was by a count of centuries later in Earth time counting that Eden began to feel something... off.

  
They had studied this world for so long and they were so close now that what she was assuming was the Human Emotion of Anticipation was building within her Core. [Anxiety, Anticipation.] She says the concepts, and they sound... right for what she is feeling.  
  
Zion gives her a metaphysical nudge, [ENCOURAGEMENT.]  
  
Yes, now wasn't the time to focus on the queasy feelings within her core. They were truly close enough now that she could begin plotting the most direct and perfect moment for their arrival and insertion...  
  
__Eden activated her Path to Victory shard.   
  
And then everything went black. Every sense, every shard dedicated to seeing something... Just gone. Blank.  
  
[Confusion.] Eden pulsed out for Zion, only to find that her Communication Shard had been affected as well.  
  
That dread sensation in her core began to grow. She immediately began to reclassify it.  
  
[Fear.] No, that wasn't quite right either. [Panic.]  
  
She went to bring up Navigation, only to find that down as well.  
  
[Backups?] She wasn't even sure why she was pulsing her ideas outwards. Her communication shard was down. But, there was some small [Hope.] that Zion would hear her and help her.  
  
She brought up Post-Cog and tried to trace back where she was when whatever had caused this to happen had... well, happened!  
  
Post-Cog began to trace backwards, until it suddenly came under attack from an alternate version of itself.  
  
[Surprise. Dismay. Confusion.] Eden wasn't sure what she was watching just now. This wasn't possible. Something was... was...  
  
And then a shooting light distracted her.

Eden focused her blackened sights onto the light... It was a Shard! A closer inspection revealed... Zion! It was Zion's own Path to Victory Shard! He must have known that hers was damaged to the point of messing with her other senses.  
  
[Relief.] Flooded Eden's mind, though that sinking feeling in her Core continued to grow.  
  
And so she pushed herself to catch that Shard.  
  
Propulsion was no longer working either.  
  
She'd just have to... to... do what? She still had some fine motor control over her body that wasn't Shard Based. So... she'd just have to get herself moving after it that way.  
  
Eden moved, chasing after the Shard. Oh how she loved her mate, but sometimes his Shard throwing aim could really be off.  
  
Eden failed to notice the pull of a Planet's gravity well until it was too late.

* * *

 

Zion could only stare on in [HORROR.] as his beloved Eden suddenly began to convulse in space, something was quite visibly wrong with her. He tried reaching out to her, only for her Communication Shard to yell at him in something akin to a scramble of various frequencies.  
  
It was a scream of pain. It wasn't Eden herself using it, however. It was the Shard itself crying out in pain.  
  
Zion stared at that moment as Eden suddenly began to rocket forwards with Propulsion, aiming at a nearby uninhabited dimensional copy of their Earth. Something was wrong- she was hurt and he had to help but- but-  
  
[HELPLESSNESS.] Zion was the Warrior. Eden was the Thinker. He simply didn't have the Shards to figure out what to do fast enough to help his beloved.  
  
And so he watched as she fell towards that uninhabited world, launching dozens upon dozens of her screaming shards in all directions. Many were simply lost to space, while a few others barely managed to hit their originally intended world.  
  
The rest were scattered across the uninhabited world that Eden was now crashing headfirst into.  
  
Zion knew he had to do something, but before he could figure out what, the tear in space caused by Eden's crash was suddenly sealed away, and Zion could no longer see the dimension she had crashed into, though he could still faintly hear her Communication Shard.  
  
He started to reach through the veil of space towards it when, suddenly, it let out a final pained cry and went silent.  
  
For what felt like Centuries, he simply floated there until it finally hit home.  
  
Eden was dead.

Zion was alone.  
  
Had he a throat that could be wet, or any atmosphere to carry the sound, he would have let loose the most sorrowful cry anyone would ever hear.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you your Entity villains of this story, one of whom is a very crafty assassin.

**Author's Note:**

> A four way cross-over, originally designed as a three-way cross over. Also Known As: What happens when Calum watches an Anime about A Collector hunting down illegal power sources named Coils and can't help but think of a certain Superhero story- while also adding in a Dash of Power Rangers for good measure.
> 
> The fourth part of the crossover will be added to tags once we reach that point. It's of no surprise if you've been reading it over on Sufficient Velocity, but I'd like to keep it a surprise here until it's revealed.


End file.
